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-,-f j 

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BEYOND 



BY 
HENRY SEWARD HUBBARD 




R <X 1896/ 

^ pi 

;ton ^ 



BOSTON 

ARENA PUBLISHING COMPANY 
Copley Square 



1^' 



Copyrighted, 1896, 

BY 

HENRY SEWARD HUBBARD. 



All Rights Reserved. 



Arena Press. 



BEYOND 



TO 

LOVERS OF THE TRUTH, 

WHATEVER 

LAND MAY CLAIM THEM FOR ITS OWN, 

TO THE 

EARNEST MEN AND WOMEN 

OF MY TIME, 

THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY 

DEDICATED. 



PREFACE. 

A word of explanation in reference 
to my title may be appropriately given 
here. By Beyond, I mean what is 
sometimes called the unseen world, but 
which might better be called the im- 
material world, since that which dis- 
tinguishes it from the world proper is 
not merely that it is invisible, but that 
it cannot be made visible to mortal 
eyes. 

However, I have not assumed to treat 
of all that the word might be made to 
cover, but have confined myself mostly 
to that territory, with the entrance to 
it, which may be said to adjoin the 
earth, and which therefore is more 
immediately interesting and important 
to be acquainted with, and have ad- 
dressed myself especially to those who 



8 PREFACE. 

seem to be constitutionally unable to 
perceive the reality of this other world, 
although willing and anxious to be 
convinced. 

If there is any one thing more than 
another which I hope to convey, it is 
that the truths which pertain to the 
superior life do not conflict with com- 
mon sense, however they may rise 
beyond the perfect grasp of that power 
of the mind. 

Heney Sewabd Hubbabd. 



INTRODUCTION. 

To my Brothers and Sisters, 
Greeting. 

I had known for some time that I 
had a book to write, but not exactly 
how I was going to set about it, when 
there fell under my notice the following 
appeal, whose unique and touching 
eloquence, I venture to say, is without 
a parallel in our literature. 

" There have always been those, and 
now they are more numerous than ever, 
who maintain that the dead do return. 

"Far be it from me to dogmatically 
negative the assertions of honest, earnest 
men engaged in the study of a subject 
so awful, so reverent, so solemn, where 
the student stands with a foot on each 
side of the boundary-line between two 
worlds. 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

" We know a little of the hither, can 
we know aught of the thither world? 
'How pure in heart, how sound in head, 
with what affections bold,' should be 
the explorer on a voyage so sublime ! 
Never from 'peak of Darien' did the 
flag of exploration fly over the opening 
up of a realm so mighty. 

" How stale and trite the fleet of a 
Magellan to the adventurous soul who 
would circumnavigate the archipelagoes 
of the dead ! 

" How commonplace Pizarro to him 
who would launch forth on that black 
and trackless Pacific across the expanse 
of which has ever lain the dread and 
the hope of our race ! 

" They know little who are robed in 
university gowns. What know they 
who are robed in shrouds ? We gather 
but little from the platform ; what can 
we learn from the grave ? The wisdom 
of the press is foolishness. Is there no 



INTRODUCTION. 11 

voice from the sepulchre ? It is we, 
not you, who are in darkness, O ye 
dead ! The splendor of the iris of 
eternity has flashed on your plane of 
vision ; but our heavy eyelids droop in 
the shadow of the nimbus of time. 

" Can you tell us naught ? Can we 
never know your secret till, in the dust, 
we lay down our bones with yours ? 

" We are here in the care, the poverty, 
the sin, and, above all, in the darkness. 
Oh, if ye can, have mercy on us ; shed 
a ray from your shekinah-light athwart 
the darkness of our desolation. We 
are trodden down by our brothers' 
among the living. Help us, our fathers 
from the dead." * 

How profoundly these words moved 
me cannot easily be told, for my entire 
life, up to this point, seems to have 
been made up of the various stages of 

* Editor TJie Agnostic Journal, London, Eng- 
land. 



12 INTRODUCTION, 

a preparation enabling me to respond to 
just sucli an appeal as this, echoed, as 
I know f nil well it is, from the hearts 
of thousands of my fellow-beings. Yet 
one who should enter the rose-embowered 
cottage by the sea where I sit writing, 
would never dream that I guard treas- 
ures of knowledge p-athered in the 
hidden realm that lies beyond the 
sense. 

For years have passed, and lonely life 
has changed to family life, and there 
have been times when I have felt almost 
at home again within the confines of the 
purely earthly realm of thoughts and 
things. Not quite, however, for that 
would be impossible. And now, shall 
I branch out in a tale of strange advent- 
ure ? Shall I seek to convey to my 
readers what led to those experiences 
which have so isolated me in thought? 
Shall I describe their outward aspect, 
the channel through which they were 



IN TR OD UCTION. 1 3 

received, as for instance, a dream, a 
trance, a vision, or other ivays less 
known ? 

To do so might amuse or entertain, 
but that is not my object. Besides, I 
understand thoroughly that in these 
modern days it is the truth, and not the 
truth-teller, that is wanted. If a man 
has anything to say, let him say it, and 
if it bear the stamp of truth, if it will 
stand the test of analysis the most 
severe, it will be accepted. If not, he 
may show a ticket of his travels beyond 
the moon, but that will not avail him. 

All that I ask of my readers is that 
they will permit me to write of that 
realm which is so hidden from mortals 
that many of them deny its very exist- 
ence, as though I knew all about it. 
Whether I do or not, no mere state- 
ment, in the absence of other evidence, 
could in the least decide. 

The Author. 



BEYOND. 



CHAPTER I. 

In the world of thought to-day, few 
things are more significant than the 
extent to which the religious dogmas of 
the past are being questioned, analyzed, 
and, in general, made to give account 
of themselves. 

People are discovering that it is law- 
ful to use the mind as a crucible, and to 
submit any and all statements, irrespec- 
tive of their age, to the electric current 
of modern fearlessness of thought, be- 
fore accepting them as truth. 

Scientific formulas, many of them, 
fare little better, and are made to yield 
up the kernel of fact they contain, 



16 BEYOND. 

stripped of the husk of theory in which 
it has long been buried. 

For the living truth is demanded 
such value as we obtain in our own life- 
experiences, if possible ; and whenever 
this can be obtained without paying the 
price it costs us in life, of pain, or loss, 
or a mortgaged future, then, indeed, the 
demand becomes imperious. 

And this has become especially true 
of late years in regard to things occult. 
Formerly the boundaries of the earth- 
life marked the limit of thought and 
aspiration, and those who seemed to 
have the widest experience within those 
bounds were often the loudest in pro- 
claiming their utter failure to find any 
lasting satisfaction in all that life could 
give. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, 
was echoed and re-echoed until the 
gloomy thought spread like a cloud 
over the sky, chilling all noble effort, 
and blighting the aspirations of the, 



BEYOND. 17 

young and hopeful. But a brighter 
day has dawned. These boundaries, 
which formerly seemed like walls im- 
penetrable, have grown thin and shad- 
owy, and it is astonishing to note how 
people everywhere are asking, as with 
open mind, Is this future life we have 
heard of so long, an actual fact? If 
so, what is the nature of it ? What are 
its relations to present facts ? and how 
may I obtain a common-sense view of 
it ? Just what are its relations to me, 
and what are mine to a future life? 
Where can I obtain clear light on the 
subject ? 

This condition of things brings it to 
pass that a peculiar responsibility rests 
upon one, like the writer, to whom has 
been given extraordinary facilities for 
acquiring the knowledge now so greatly 
in demand. To relate what those facili- 
ties were, how or why given, and what 
price in the currency of the hidden 
2 



18 BEYOND. 

realm was paid for so much of its treas- 
ures as was brought away, might inter- 
est the curious, as I have suggested, 
but it would not materially affect the 
value of what is to be given. That 
must stand or fall by its intrinsic worth, 
not by the circumstances associated with 
its acquirement. 

It may be imparted, however, that 
this knowledge was obtained at a period 
separated from the present by an inter- 
val of fourteen years, that so momentous 
were the personal experiences associated 
therewith, that the few weeks during 
which they occurred, together with 
those immediately preceding and follow- 
ing, seem to constitute, as it were, a 
separate existence, whose length, if it 
were to be measured by such events as 
leave their indelible impress on the soul, 
far exceeds the entire remainder of my 
life. 

That I have kept this knowledge 



BEYOND. 19 

locked up so long has been due to vari- 
ous causes beyond my control, and I am 
more than glad that I am at last able to 
put on record some fragments of it, at 
least, whose value I do not underesti- 
mate, although very rarely in the his- 
tory of the world has it been given out 
in this way. 



20 BEYOND. 



CHAPTER II. 

Perhaps I cannot open my subject in 
any better way than by giving a few 
reasons why a knowledge of The Be- 
yond has remained a sealed book for 
centuries. 

My first reason will not be a very 
satisfactory one, because I cannot now 
enter into it as fully as I could wish ; 
but it belongs first, and cannot be omit- 
ted. A knowledge of The Beyond has 
remained hidden from men, first, be- 
cause those intelligences who were cap- 
able of imparting it have refrained from 
doing so. Some of these intelligences 
were actuated by selfish motives. They 
could more easily control those whom 
they hoped to enslave, by keeping them 
ignorant. Others have remained silent 



BEYOND. 21 

out of respect for an edict proceeding 
from a far height at a time when all 
men were believers in a future state, and 
so many of them were absorbed in spec- 
ulating upon it, and holding communi- 
cations with the departed, that the earth 
was neglected, and in danger of going 
to waste. Hence the edict, which was 
promulgated through the kings who 
were able themselves to see the need of 
it. 

Another very important reason why 
this knowledge has remained hidden, is 
because to embody it in a language ap- 
propriate to it, and, at the same time, 
avoid obscurity, is exceedingly difficult. 

Why ? Because it belongs to a dif- 
ferent world, a world which has no 
nearer relation to this one than thoughts 
have to things. To illustrate what I 
mean by this, suppose you should wake 
up some night and find yourself in 
silent darkness and unable to move a 



22 BEYOND. 

muscle. Suppose you could not even 
feel the bed under you, being conscious 
only of being supported in a horizontal 
position. So long as these avenues of 
sense remained closed, the world of things 
would not exist to you, and you could 
not say, of your own knowledge, that it 
continued to exist for anyone else. 

While the situation would be a 
startling one without doubt, I am go- 
ing to assume that you would have a 
sufficient degree of self-control to keep 
your mental balance. This would be 
the easier as you discovered that your 
mental vision was as clear as ever, and 
that your real self, which is back of all 
your senses, had received no shock or 
injury. You would naturally wish to 
know just what had happened, and it 
would be apt to disturb you somewhat 
to find that your reasoning powers 
failed to respond when you called upon 
them to solve the problem, as naturally 



BEYOND. 23 

they would, since the brain, with 
which they do their work, would share 
the inaction of the body. Now, if the 
world of things had thus vanished, 
what could remain ? In the first 
place, memory. You would be able to 
call up the pictures of the past, and 
live over again in your mind any scene 
there depicted. But you would not be 
confined to living in the past. Although 
unable to see or to hear, you would be 
able to assume the mental attitude 
either of looking or listening, and as 
you sought to penetrate the gloom of 
your surroundings, you would be con- 
scious of lifting eyelids which perhaps 
had never been raised before, and the 
mystic light of another world would 
dawn upon you. Shadowy forms of 
graceful outline would be seen, at first 
dimly, then with greater clearness. 
You would not mistake them for mor- 
tals, and, having no acquaintance with 



24 BEYOND. 

other-world intelligences, you might 
take them for moving pictures, desti- 
tute of any kind of life. 

Presently you would become aware 
that connected thoughts were passing 
through your mind, without conscious 
volition on your part, and assuming 
the attitude of a listener you would 
discover that the inner world of sound 
was opening to you. The subject 
treated of might not relate to you per- 
sonally, but you would hail with de- 
light the opportunity to prove yourself 
in communication with other minds. 

Presently some sentiment is ex- 
pressed which you do not approve, and 
you put forth an impulse of will-power 
in protest. Instantly comes a thought- 
message directly to you. Who has 
arrested my current of thought ? The 
meaning of this is at once apparent. 
You are like a telegraph operator who 
has been listening to a passing message, 



BEYOND. 25 

containing a false statement, and has 
stopped it. Yon might now withdraw 
your protest and allow the message to 
pass as something which did not con- 
cern you, or you might assert your in- 
dividuality and reply to the sharp 
question by saying, " Because I allow 
nothing to pass through my mind 
which I do not approve." If you 
adopted the first course, you might be let 
off with a curse, and told to mind your 
own business hereafter; but if you 
should manifest the temerity indicated 
by the second, a thundering "What?" 
might fall upon your new sense, and 
you would discover that you had a 
fight on your hands. It may be sup- 
posed that you would mentally assume 
an upright position, which in that 
world corresponds to the act of rising 
here, and brace yourself for the con- 
test. But it is not necessary to carry 
the illustration any farther at this time. 



26 BEYOND, 

I merely wished to show how thoughts 
may take the place of things in the 
mind's arena when, for any reason, 
things are shut out. 

A third reason why a knowledge of 
The Beyond is not more generally dis- 
seminated, is that false ideas in regard 
to death are so predominant that it has 
become a habit with the great majority 
to dismiss from the mind all thoughts 

o 

having, or that are supposed to have, 
any possible connection with it, and 
therefore the avenue of approach to the 
minds of such is kept closed by them- 
selves. 

It may be asked why the solitary 
student is not able to attain to a satis- 
factory solution of the great problem, 
although seeking it with utmost earn- 
estness. And I answer, first, because 
he probably seeks for it in the same 
way that he would seek for earth-knowl- 
edge, which is an error ; and, secondly, 



BEYOND. 27 

because those who would otherwise 
gladly give it to him are able to read his 
motives, and finding them purely self- 
ish, they turn away and leave him, 
while those spirits who have occult 
knowledge to sett, demand pay in a 
coin which the student is seldom will- 
ing to give, namely, a certain degree of 
control over him. 



28 BEYOND. 



CHAPTER III. 

Mathematicians have frequently 
discussed the possibility of what is 
called a fourth dimension. 

They have shown by clear reasoning 
that if we could suppose a person to be 
acquainted only with objects of two 
dimensions, that is, plane surfaces, the 
possibility of a third would be as diffi- 
cult to comprehend as now are the spec- 
ulations on a possible fourth. For in- 
stance, it would be as mysterious an 
operation to transfer anything from one 
point to another without moving it 
along the surface that lay between, as 
is now the manipulation of solid objects, 
like the passage of matter through mat- 
ter, by the masters of occult science. 

This fine example of reasoning from 



BEYOND. 29 

the known to the unknown may be 
compared to Leverrier's researches in 
one respect, and that the most impor- 
tant one, namely, that the looked-for 
fact in all verity awaits discovery, and 
that the scientist who shall first boldly 
declare that the objective world about 
us, which seems to occupy and does 
occupy all of space that we can reach 
by ordinary means of thought, is merely 
a veil which hides a world just as real, 
and having just as real relations to us, 
as the first is supposed to monopolize, 
and which, in its essential nature, is 
independent of space, and its concomi- 
tant, time, — whoever, I say, shall first 
boldly declare this, will fairly win a 
crown of laurel. 

When I say that this world has real 
relations to us, I do not mean us as 
mere aggregations of matter in a highly 
organized form ; I mean us, the creat- 
ures of hope and fear, of joy and de- 



30 BEYOND. 

pression, gay at heart or careworn with 
responsibility; us to whom friendship, 
love, and purity are realities and not 
mere names, and who cherish the firm 
belief that loyalty to our ideals and de- 
votion to truth are immortal in their 
nature, and that it may be possible that 
we ourselves may yet become as impas- 
sive to the assaults of time. 

Shall I say us, also, the creatures of 
doubt and despair, whose sky is hope- 
lessly clouded, and to whom anything 
resembling happiness has become only 
a memory ? The world of which I 
speak has the same direct relations to 
us all. 

The idea is a common one that this 
invisible world is to be sought, if at all, 
among the imponderable gases, that if 
it have objectivity, as it is supposed it 
must have, the nature of it will resem- 
ble these forms of matter ; and that by 
traveling out in thought, so to speak, 



BEYOND. 31 

along this line, we shall presently arrive 
at a sufficiently accurate concept of 
what these invisible realities are like. 

It is this delusion, that the unseen is 
by so much the unreal, instead of the 
contrary, that I hope to do something to 
destroy. 

Let me give an example of occult 
power of a scientific sort, as exercised 
by free spirits. 

One wishes to speak to a friend. 
What does he do ? He simply speaks 
the name of that friend in his mind. 
Immediately, and without further effort 
on his part, there appears before his 
mental vision a clear outline represent- 
ation of the form of that friend, reacty 
to answer with perfect distinctness any 
question that may be asked of him. It 
is telephone communication without 
apparatus, and with the appearance of 
the friend. Were the two in close 
sympathy, perhaps engaged in the same 



32 BEYOND. 

kind of spiritual labor, so that the ques- 
tion would be of a kind not unexpected, 
the rapidity of action common to spirits 
would make it possible to ask the ques- 
tion and receive the answer in an in- 
finitesimal fraction of a second. 

I have called this occult power of a 
scientific sort. By this I mean to indi- 
cate, what is sometimes forgotten, that 
The Beyond has its science as well as 
religion, and that it is only because its 
science has been a sealed book so long 
and the corruption of revealed religion 
has been so great, that, as a result, the 
acceptance of occult science itself as 
truth is called, by some, religion, 
although removed from it as by infinity. 
It is true, however, that the devotee to 
occult science who shall persistently 
declare its genuineness in the face of 
opposition, scorn, or even persecution, 
is on the road to illumination, and he 
may himself become a gateway between 



BEYOND. 33 

physical life and death, through which 
may pass and repass the message, the 
tone, or even the phantom form which 
testifies of a world beyond the grave. 
To such a one, his belief becomes a sure 
and certain knowledge of a scientific 
fact, as verified by sympathetic experi- 
ence times without number; and the 
time is not far distant when these at- 
tainments will receive the same recogni- 
tion, as belonging to the domain of 
reality, as those of physical science now 
do. 
3 



34 BEYOND. 



CHAPTER IV. 

Science, as such, is a knowledge of 
physical facts. Religion, as such, is an 
apprehension of spiritual truths. 

The work of the scientist is to sepa- 
rate facts from delusions, and then to 
arrange and classify his knowledge. 
The work of the religionist is to 
separate truth from error, to make it 
effectual in practice, and give it to the 
world. 

In their essence, science and religion 
are neither enemies nor friends. They 
are not necessarily associates, but their 
respective domains are included in the 
domain of thought, and thought is an 
attribute of the ego. The ego in us, 
then, is in touch with both religion and 
science : with science, primarily, through 



BEYOND. 35 

this material body, which, surcharged 
with vital magnetism, moves at its 
will; and with religion through that 
inner conscious self which so avoids 
expression through matter, that it may 
remain contentedly under lock for more 
than half a lifetime, and which, even 
when released, may need a special im- 
pulse to induce it to express itself in 
words. 

The religious nature in man is, in 
fact, so hidden that it seems at times 
impossible to draw it out in any mani- 
festation whatever, which fact causes 
many to deny its existence altogether ; 
and there is to-day a widely prevalent 
doctrine, world-wide I might say among 
scholars, that all the facts observable 
which could possibly be grouped under 
the head of religion may readily be 
distributed among mere physical phe- 
nomena on the one hand, and scientific 
or intellectual on the other. 



36 BEYOND. 

The skepticism in regard to the ver- 
bal authority of the sacred writings is 
intimately associated with the same 
doctrine, as is shown by the way the 
errors and the truth of the Bible are 
made to seem one, and the whole is 
rejected as error. 

It is taught, in effect, that all which 
goes by the name of religion is un- 
worthy the serious attention of the 
thoughtful, that it had its origin in the 
barbarous stage of our development as 
a race, and ought to be laid aside as a 
garment outgrown. The days of this 
particular form of unbelief are num- 
bered. 

Why ? Because it is to be demon- 
strated that religion is something more 
than moonlight vaporings of the credu- 
lous, something other than the simple 
faith of children ; that religion is not 
only a spiritual reality, but that it has a 
body of its own. 



BEYOND. 37 

In order that the meaning of this 
statement may not be mistaken, let it 
be remembered that some of the most 
powerful forms of matter, electricity, 
for example, are entirely invisible. 

Therefore, when I say that religion 
has a body of its own, it is not neces- 
sary to go delving for anything. That 
body itself may be undiscoverable by 
any sense save feeling. Have you ever 
been in the presence of a man who 
could fairly be said to embody religion ? 
Of those who manifest its spirit so pure 
and unselfish, there are comparatively 
few in the world, but of those who, to 
that spirit, add a full manly or womanly 
strength, the number is brought so low 
that multitudes of people may perhaps 
never have come in contact with any. 
Such as these bear about with them a 
consciousness of power so great as to 
utterly destroy every kind of fear save 
one, the fear of doing wrong. The 



38 BEYOND. 

name of Savonarola will occur to many 
of my readers. 

It ought not to be necessary to add 
that I am using the word religion in a 
different sense from that attaching to it 
in such a phrase as the World's Parlia- 
ment of Religions. 

If I should say, There are many sci- 
ences, yet science is one, I should ex- 
pect to be fairly well understood. 

I would make the parallel declara- 
tion, There are many religions, but re- 
ligion is one. 



JBEYONB. 39 



CHAPTER V. 

Is there any common ground on 
which science and religion meet? 
There is. They meet in modern Spirit- 
ualism. 

But because modern Spiritualism con- 
sists of a body of facts and theories on 
the one hand, and a countless number 
of soul-stirring experiences on the other, 
it follows that it takes a great many 
different people to fairly represent 
modern Spiritualism. 

Some have devoted themselves to it 
exclusively on the religious side, others 
as exclusively on the scientific side. 
According to the bent of their nature, 
and with an equal degree of courage, 
the earnest, devoted students of science, 
on the one hand, and those of religion, 



40 BEYOND. 

on the other, are approaching from op- 
posite poles this forbidden ground. 

Disregarding the warnings of the 
older religious teachers, that evil, and 
only evil, haunts the grewsome place, 
one wing of the army of truth-seekers 
is making the discovery that if all the 
manifestations of modern spiritualism 
are to be attributed to one source, and 
that an evil one, then never was a house 
so divided against itself before. They 
are prepared to show that some of its 
most astonishing phenomena begin and 
end in good to all who witness them, 
and they declare that only a culpable 
misuse of the powers of the mind would 
lead to any other inference than that 
these good results come originally from 
good sources, and are therefore worthy 
of that reverence which of right belongs 
to the good, wherever it appears. 

The other wing of the army of truth- 
seekers also contains its heroes. Have 



BEYOND. 41 

you not told us, they say to the great 
scientists who have laid down the prin- 
ciples on which investigations of all 
kinds should be conducted, that science 
claims the world for its field, and espe- 
cially the world of phenomena ? 

Why, then, do so many of our captains 
and colonels, who should represent the 
thought of the higher officers, so per- 
sistently endeavor to prevent us from 
obtaining for ourselves the store of facts 
upon which, we are told, the theories of 
spiritualism are based? 

Is it possible for us to have intelli- 
gent opinions even, to say nothing of 
carefully-drawn conclusions on this mat- 
ter, without following the usual course, 
so strenuously insisted on in all other 
branches of scientific research, that of 
personally observing the phenomena for 
ourselves? And so when they get no 
answer to this, or no answer which sat- 
isfies those who love the truth for its 



42 BEYOND. 

own sake, they proceed, these scientific 
explorers, and with caution enter the 
unknown country, avoiding, as far as 
possible, that portion which they recog- 
nize as especially occupied by the other 
division of truth-seekers before de- 
scribed. 

And they find no lack of material 
upon which to exercise the keenest 
faculties of their minds, while their 
interest becomes so great that they are 
soon ready to exclaim, Why was I kept 
away from here so long ? 

All indications, say they, favor the 
idea that in this direction rather than 
in any other is to be sought the solution 
of that profoundest of mysteries, the 
problem of life, and, with faces aglow 
with interest, they pursue their explo- 
rations, always ready, however, to de- 
clare that they have not changed their 
course, they are still in the pursuit of 
science and have not the slightest idea 



BEYOND. 43 

of joining hands with religionists on 
any pretext whatever. 

All of which goes to show that the 
realm of the occult may be conven- 
iently divided into two grand divi- 
sions, one of which may be called occult 
science, and the other occult religion ; 
and that part of both which has been 
recently brought to view is the do- 
main known as modern Spiritualism, 
where, as I have said, science and 
religion meet. I wish it could be said 
that scientists, as such, and religious 
teachers, as such, have also not only 
met, but shaken hands across the nar- 
row line which still divides them even 
here, on this which I have called a 
common ground. 

But it is to be feared that there is 
all too little thought of any possible 
terms of peace between the opposing 
forces. 

Let us hope that out from the cloudy 



44 BEYOND. 

mysteries of the debatable land itself 
may come the gleam of a star whose 
brightness shall illumine all who lift 
their eyes, and whose pure, sweet in- 
fluence shall change foes to friends, 
as heart shall answer heart beneath its 
shining. 



BEYOND. 45 



CHAPTER VI. 

There are many, however, who have 
an invincible repugnance to this method 
of research, and I would here say for 
the benefit of such, that while I am 
on friendly terms with spiritualists 
generally, I am not indebted to them 
for what I have to give. My obser- 
vations of the phenomena of spiritu- 
alism, although wide and varied, have 
all been made since I came to know, 
independently, that there are intelli- 
gences above man, and that there is a 
world distinctly different from this, 
where they have their home. 

Spiritualistic phenomena, as observed 
through mediums, have, in a general 
way, confirmed what I knew in regard 
to the other world, but I find many of 



46 BEYOND. 

the prevalent ideas which are suppos- 
ably based on these phenomena to be 
erroneous in the extreme. For in- 
stance, it is taught as a doctrine that 
there is no death, and those who teach 
it point triumphantly to the demon- 
strations of the survival of those 
whose mortal part has been laid in 
the grave, not realizing that in so do- 
ing they prove themselves to be still 
in bondage to the old error, that 
death and annihilation are one and 
the same, and that consequently who- 
ever has escaped the one, must nec- 
essarily have escaped the other. 

To prove that a man who has severed 
his connection with the mortal state has 
not suffered annihilation, proves nothing 
whatever as to his acquaintance with 
death. 

Even the passing from one world to 
the other, which is commonly associated 
with death, is not the same thing, for 



BEYOND. 47 

many possess the power of so passing 
while still tenants of the clay. 

If death, then, is not annihilation, nor 
the mere passing from one kind of life into 
another, what is it ? It is the severing 
of the magnetic bonds which unite the 
body of the individual to the body of the 
race as a whole. 

We do not often consider what an im- 
portant element in our lives are these 
magnetic currents which link us to our 
fellows. 

Silent and invisible as they are, they 
hold us with a tremendous power. 
What our friends, our neighbors, 
our relatives think us capable of do- 
ing, that we can do with comparative 
ease ; but anything out of the common, 
calling for the exercise of ability which 
they do not suppose us to possess — how 
nearly impossible it is for us to do it, 
however conscious we may be of the in- 
herent power ! 



48 BEYOND. 

As a part of the race we are bound to 
it by magnetic currents so long as our 
mortal life continues, and the cutting 
off of these currents by death may be 
to our consciousness the greatest mis- 
fortune or the greatest happiness we 
have ever known. 

Now I am not preaching, I am simply 
stating that which I know to be true. 
I know it in the same way that I know 
anything wherein experience shuts out 
even the shadow of a doubt. 

To speak of the misfortune of death : 
suppose jou were a clock which for 
twenty-five years had been a part of the 
world's life, keeping good time and al- 
ways on duty. Then suppose you were 
suddenly laid away in the dark and 
dusty attic of a warehouse until some 
estate should be settled that would re- 
quire an indefinite number of years. 

The comparison is not perfect. The 
clock is not only mostly automatic, as 



BEYOND. 49 

we are, but entirely so. That in our 
nature which is essentially free is not 
even touched by death, but the bodily 
activities and associations may be our 
only field of action, and these are cut 
off absolutely, while memory recalls 
every event of the life that is finished, 
and especially every decision which has 
had the slightest influence upon our 
destiny. The positive element in us 
which has found constant vent in phys- 
ical action is rendered helpless by the 
complete paralysis of all the motor 
nerves. We cannot even think, for 
this requires some movement of the 
brain. A consciousness of being left 
behind while the world travels on, a 
feeling that this experience had not 
been foreseen in the least, nor in any way 
provided against, spite of warnings which 
now seem to echo and re-echo through 
the darkness — these are what is left 
us in place of the sunlight, the breezes 
4 



50 BEYOND. 

of evening, the voices of children, the 
light of the stars. 

But death may be release, it may be 
happiness, it may be ecstasy beyond the 
power of words to tell. We may have 
cast the long look ahead in time. We 
may have decided that since bodily life 
is limited at best, it shall not be first 
in our regards: its appetites, its de- 
mands, shall not take precedence above 
those calls which find their answer in 
the depths of being, calls to rise out of 
the mire of reckless self-indulgence, and 
clothe ourselves in the garb of a true 
manhood and womanhood, taking for our 
model those who count not their life dear 
unto them, but reach out for eternal 
values. 

The pathway is not w r ide, and 
they who pursue it may find themselves 
at close of life (I am not speaking 
especially of old age) almost alone. 
The energies of the spirit have grown by 



BEYOND 51 

constant exercise, and the soul has grown 
strong, imparting its vibrations to the 
body, which has so responded that, one 
after another, the magnetic links which 
have held it to the slower progress of 
the race have snapped asunder. We are 
far ahead, and the spirit longs for purer 
air than it can find on earth. We have 
anticipated all the pains of death. We 
have endured them in our struggle for 
the mastery of ourselves. Death now but 
sets the seal upon our victory, gives us 
the freedom we have earned, ushers us 
into the society for which Ave have pre- 
pared ourselves, crowns us heirs of im- 
mortality. 

Now, whether death shall be this 
happiness or that misery, in either case 
it will be remembered as a great fact of 
consciousness, the greatest ever known, 
and the doctrine that there is no death 
will never be able to find lodgment in 
the minds of those who have experienced 
it. 



52 BEYOND. 



CHAPTER VII. 

It may be worth our while to inquire 
how this extremely modern doctrine 
came into being, and if we can solve 
the problem, it may reflect light upon 
the genesis of other doctrines very much 
older and equally erroneous. 

.There is something so startling, so 
unexpected, in the phrase, " There is 
no death," that we are quite safe in 
assuming that it did not originate in 
the mind of a mortal. In fact, one 
would be obliged first to disown his 
mortality before he could utter it with 
any consciousness of speaking the truth. 
If, then, the words have come from the 
Beyond, it would appear that some super- 
mundane intelligence has been promul- 
gating error. But let us not be too 



BEYOND. 53 

hasty. Let us remember that in our 
grandfather's time the great majority of 
people looked upon death as the termi- 
nation of existence. It was an impene- 
trable darkness. Those who claimed to 
know anything different were so few, 
and their evidence was so mysterious, 
as to have a scarcely perceptible effect 
on this portion of our race. Death had 
come to mean annihilation, and when 
the age-long dictum, shutting the two 
worlds apart, was removed, those spirit- 
teachers who were commissioned to 
scatter the darkness were obliged to use 
expedients. Laying aside their own 
understanding of the word death, and 
taking up the erroneous meaning at- 
tached to it by those whom they wished 
to reach, they sent out this incisive 
denial, There is no death. The para- 
phrase would be, There is no such death 
as you believe in, which was the truth, 
and had the effect of truth upon the 



54 BEYOND. 

minds of those who heard it, lifting 
them out of the darkness, flashing upon 
them, light. The word was a medicine 
of wonderful effect, but it was not in- 
tended as a food, and spiritualists of 
to-day who make it a part of their daily 
diet are most seriously injured thereby. 
Who that has ever attended the average 
seance but can recall the careless tri- 
lling, the insensate levity, of many while 
waiting for the hour. By their conduct 
they seem to say, What is death more 
than a mere journey to another country ? 
Or a seance, what is it more than a tel- 
ephone office ? Most startling will be 
the event to such as these. 



BEYOND. 55 



CHAPTER VIII. 

But it is time that we took a com- 
prehensive view of this outer world 
which lies beyond the domain of sense. 

What is the most striking difference 
between that world and this one ? I 
answer, the world we are now living in 
is a material world, which to understand 
most thoroughly we must acquire a 
knowledge of the properties of matter. 
This we begin to do in earliest child- 
hood by the use of our senses, and this 
we continue to do, to a greater or less 
extent, as long as we live, calling into 
play the reason, highest sense of all, as 
soon as it is developed ; and by the use 
of this, the royal sense, with the others 
as its servitors, we may arrive at a very 
thorough comprehension of the world of 



56 BEYOND. 

matter, so far as its relation to our 
needs is concerned. 

On the other hand, the world that 
lies before us is, above all else, an im- 
material world, using the phrase to de- 
note an almost entire absence of matter, 
but not in the least to indicate any 
absence of reality. No, for this future 
life is a reality more positive in its char- 
acter than the foundations of the pyr- 
amids, and its manifestations, being 
neither more nor less than the mani- 
festations of living beings, can only be 
understood when that fact is kept in 
mind. They do not lend themselves to 
the inspection of the curious, these deni- 
zens of another life, but when condi- 
tions favor, they take hold of human in- 
strumentalities and wield them with a 
power and skill that defy all resistance 
for the time, and leave on all who are 
present an ineffaceable mark. 

It may be objected that this statement 



BEYOND. 57 

is incapable of proof, that, of all who 
have crossed the line between life and 
death, none have returned to bring posi- 
tive evidence of the existence of such 
an unknown country, inhabited in such 
a way. The contrary is asserted, and 
while facts do not need the bolster of 
argument, whoever is in possession of 
a fact can present arguments relating 
thereto tending to throw light upon it. 
It is asserted by those who claim to 
know, of whom the writer is one, that 
an inhabited domain is in immediate 
touch with the earth, although not dis- 
coverable by any of the scientific instru- 
ments of investigation, such as the tele- 
scope, the microscope, or the spectro- 
scope, nor yet by the surgeon's scalpel. 
The camera, however, which may be 
called an instrument of record, has, at 
certain times, produced evidence which 
has excited a vast amount of argument 
pro and con. 



58 BEYOND. 

This will not now be entered into, but 
attention is called to a very important 
consideration bearing upon the whole 
subject. 



BEYOND. 59 



CHAPTER IX. 

I hold in my hand a lens. This lens, 
in its shape, resembles a certain other 
lens through which I look in examin- 
ing it. It was, indeed, modeled after 
the other, which is a part of my organ 
of vision. I place the glass lens in a 
microscope, and a hitherto unknown 
world is revealed to me. It was there 
before, but I could not see it. Do I see 
it now ivitli the lens ? It is evident that 
the lens is merely an aid to vision, since 
the lens in my eye is also necessary to 
convey the picture to my mind. 

But now another question : Do I see 
with the lens which is a part of my eye ? 
Is not that also merely an aid to vision ? 
Let us consider. Since I have two eyes, 
I may lose one of them without losing 



60 BEYOND. 

the power to see. If I am so unfortu- 
nate as to lose one, then, if the eye is not 
merely an aid to vision, but part of the 
vision itself, it would naturally follow 
that I should see only half as well as 
before ; but this, very evidently, is not 
true. 

I can read as well as ever. For the 
examination of anything on a flat sur- 
face, one eye is as good as two. 

Notice, also, that the lens of the eye 
and the glass lens are not only alike in 
shape and transparency, but that both 
are composed of material substances 
that can be analyzed, and that both are 
used to acquire knowledge of such sub- 
stances and the relations existing be- 
tween them. The glass lens is merely 
a supplement to the lens of the eye. It 
is one step further removed from the 
vision, but even the lens of the eye it- 
self is not the seeing power. That lies 
back of all. 



BEYOND. 61 

Take now the ear-trumpet, a contriv- 
ance to concentrate sound to a given 
point. It is intended as an aid to hear- 
ing, but it is not inseparably associated 
with the power to hear. A person 
with normal senses does very well 
without it. How about the ear it- 
self? 

Does that constitute a part of the 
hearing power of a man? If it does, 
what is the necessity of the auditory 
nerve ? If the hearing and the ear 
were one and the same, there would be 
no need of this connecting link with 
the brain. The external and the in- 
ternal ear, like the ear-trumpet, are 
purely material, and by means of 
them we are able to cognize those 
material emanations called sound. 

I speak of sound as a material 
emanation, because whatever sound 
comes to us through the ear comes from 
some material source. The ear, being 



62 BEYOND. 

material, is adapted to convey such 
emanations to the brain, through which 
the mind becomes conscious of their 
existence. 

The sense of touch, also, is exclu- 
sively adapted to the acquainting of 
its owner with still another , aspect 
of things material. Hardness, softness, 
smoothness, roughness, heat, cold, and 
other attributes of matter become 
known through this sense, and it may 
be considered a rule without excep- 
tion that when the sense of touch is 
excited, some material object is respon- 
sible. The same thing is true of the 
senses of smell and taste, but as their 
field of action is comparatively limited, 
I will allow the first three named to 
represent the whole number. 

The organs of sight, hearing, and 
touch, then, are the three principal 
avenues through which we obtain 
knowledge of matter, they themselves, 



BEYOND. Q'6 

however highly organized, being also 
material. 

Now, I have said that there is an 
inhabited domain in immediate touch 
with the earth, although not dis- 
coverable by any of the scientific instru- 
ments of investigation. Sight, hearing, 
and touch do not sustain this, and 
declare such a domain non-existent. 
If we bear in mind that these organs 
deal with matter only, it may be freely 
admitted that they speak the truth. 
The world whose existence we are 
asserting is an immaterial world, and 
although it be immaterial, it can be 
shown that it has, nevertheless, a claim 
upon our profound attention. 

Certainly, after what has been shown, 
it ought not to lose in interest on that 
account. For, if our bodily senses are, 
by their very constitution, unable to 
bring us any reports save such as per- 
tain to matter, their silence in regard 



64 BEYOND. 

to the world we speak of counts for 
nothing. 

But it may be said that all 
entities are material. This is a specious 
plea, but the generalization is too 
broad. Let us test ifc in a familiar 
way. Benjamin Franklin was one of 
the signers of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and attached his name to the 
immortal document in a clear and 
legible manner. All this has to do 
with matter. Even the emotions 
which he may be supposed to have ex- 
perienced while affixing his name, al- 
though not in themselves material, had 
a material effect upon his frame. 

I say that those emotions were not 
in themselves material. I might take 
my stand here, but prefer to go one step 
further, and put a question : What 
were those emotions? and then add, 
This question is not in itself material. 

It might be made a subject of thought. 



BEYOND. 65 

An essay might be written upon it, 
which would be esteemed good, bad, or 
indifferent, according as the author 
rightly apprehended the character of 
the man. 

The question may never have been 
put into language before, but it is 
now a real entity, and our mental 
powers, acting freely, will have no 
trouble in so regarding it. It will be 
seen that, while it may become associated 
with things material, may be written so 
as to be seen, spoken so as to be heard, 
or even stamped to reach the apprehen- 
sion of the blind, these material associa- 
tions are no essential part of the ques- 
tion, since it might arise in the mind 
without any such aid, and be examined 
there without calling into play any one 
of the bodily senses, or any combination 
of them. 

It may be said that this is an idle 
question, unworthy to take an impor- 
5 



66 BEYOND. 

tant place in an argument, but it can- 
not be said that it is a foolish question ; 
and it may well stand as a representa- 
tive of other questions, questions which 
might have been substituted ; questions 
which have arisen in many minds at 
the same time, and the answering of 
which has involved the overthrow of 
kingdoms, thereby demonstrating, if 
necessary, the reality of their existence. 



BEYOND. 67 



CHAPTER X. 

In order to make progress in the 
search for wisdom, it is necessary that 
we should bind ourselves to follow 
where truth may lead. 

We cannot maintain our name as fol- 
lowers of the truth, if, whenever her 
footsteps turn in some particular direc- 
tion, we refuse to follow, or if, when- 
ever the path leads in the direction in 
which we have predetermined not to 
travel, we begin to cast aspersions on 
the sincerity of our leader. 

All who would attain the freedom 
which large possessions give, must 
learn sometimes to lay aside prejudice 
of every kind, and follow according 
to the general law which bids us pro- 
ceed until some real obstacle presents 



68 BEYOND. 

itself, or some real danger confronts 
us. 

My illustration has led us to the 
point where it appears that we are able 
to say, Realities are not always material 
in their nature. In other words, mate- 
riality and reality are not inseparably 
associated. They may be separately 
considered, and dealt with as though 
not related. The question, What were 
Franklin's emotions when signing the 
Declaration of Independence ? is a real 
question. In the world of mind it has 
a reason for existence, and because the 
world of mind is associated with the 
world of matter, and, in some ways at 
least, takes precedence, that which is 
real in its domain may be asserted 
as real in the presence and by use 
of some of the appliances of the 
latter. 

The converse of the truth, that real- 
ities may be devoid of materiality, may 



BEYOND. 69 

be given here as an aid to the under- 
standing. 

Material things are not always real in 
their nature. The scenery of the stage, 
the portrait in oil, effigies in wax are 
familiar illustrations, and it will be ob- 
served that none of these are intended 
to deceive. They are merely examples 
of material things used in an unreal 
way. 

In looking at them, we may, by the 
powers of mind which we possess, endow 
them with a temporary reality, which 
will aid in producing mental results, or 
we may refuse to so endow them, in 
which case they remain barren of effect 
upon us. I have given examples of 
things real but not material, and of 
things material but not real. Take 
another example of the first of these : 
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 
to Animals rests upon a basis that is 
not material. It rests upon an idea. If 



70 BEYOND. 

the idea that cruelty to animals is 
harmful, not only to them, but to those 
who inflict it upon them, could be at 
some future time disproved, then we 
should expect that the society would 
disappear. At present it is sufficient 
to say that the society has a real founda- 
tion which is in no danger of being 
destroyed. 



BEYOND. 71 



CHAPTER XI. 

It will readily be seen that to take 
firmly the position that realities may be 
devoid of materiality involves a great 
deal, and those who endeavor to prevent 
this thought from taking root in any 
particular mind are apt to hold up 
before him examples of the immaterial 
which are not real. Most dreams are 
of this nature. Their confused outlines 
make temporary impressions on the 
memory and are then forgotten. But 
we have not to do with such as these. 
We recognize that real things may be 
material, such as certain houses, lands, 
or mountains, and that unreal things may 
be immaterial, like passing dreams just 
spoken of; but the immaterial which is 



72 BEYOND. 

none the less real is what we bring into 
view. And if we are ready to admit, 
or to go further and declare, that reality 
and materiality are not necessarily con- 
joined, we are then ready to give a fair 
hearing to the statement that a real but 
immaterial world, inhabited by real but 
immaterial beings, is in closest relations 
with our own. 

These real but immaterial beings, 
because they are real and intelligent, 
are possessed of the primal attributes 
of all intelligent beings : they have 
memory, feeling, emotion, will. 

In power they differ widely from each 
other, and in their essential character 
there are as many shades of difference 
as with mortals. 

Let us speak first of their power. 
This is mostly exercised in their own 
field, that of the immaterial, yet to sup- 
pose that it is any the less real in its 
effects upon our lives is to forget how 



BEYOND. 73 

small a part our senses directly play in 
influencing our motives. The end and 
object of our efforts may be to obtain 
the means to gratify our senses or those 
of our friends, but the process through 
which we are obliged to work is so com- 
plicated, it involves the play of so many 
forces, it brings us into relations with 
so many people, each with his own 
plans and purposes, that we are con- 
tinually making decisions based upon 
what we consider as probable, rather 
than certain, results. This is the op- 
portunity of the spirits, and we often 
discover that all our efforts have simply 
tended to the advancement of others, 
while we are left in the lurch. The 
man who keeps his temper under such 
circumstances may be favored by the 
receipt of a thought-message. It enters 
his mind as ideas do, with a flash, and 
if he is wise he will carefully elaborate 
it into words. I have been working for 



74 BEYOND. 

myself only, bending everything as far as 
possible to my own enrichment. Others 
have been doing the same. What right 
have I to complain if they have done 
with me, by their superior power and 
foresight, what I have tried to do with 
them ? None at all. 

Morally we are on the same level. 
Let this misfortune be a lesson to 
me. Henceforth I will at least make 
an effort to do as I would be done 

by- 

As he makes this resolution, a warm 
glow suddenly pervades his being. He 
feels at once lighter and stronger, and 
then perhaps he does a little thinking 
for himself. " If I believed in angels, 
I should say that they were near, and 
touched me then ; I never felt anything 
like it." Little does he suspect the 
truth, that the whole idea which he so 
carefully elaborated in his mind had 
been flashed into it from without by an 



BEYOND. 75 

angel-friend, and that when it had borne 
its natural fruit in a good resolution, it 
became possible for the same friend to 
convey to him a touch of her own 
delight. 

It may be objected that illustrations 
like these prove nothing as to the source 
of the experience ; that to deny that 
invisible intelligences so play upon men 
is as rational, or more so, as to say they 
do. But we are not limited to such 
comparatively indefinite evidence. For 
nearly fifty years it has been permitted, 
or commanded, or both, that these in- 
visible beings should demonstrate the 
reality of continued existence, and they 
have been doing so in a great variety 
of ways. For particulars, reference is 
made to the periodical literature de- 
voted to the subject, and to the scores 
of books which have been written upon 
it. 

It is not my purpose, however, to 



76 BEYOND. 

enter into this field of evidence with, 
any approach to minutiae, for it was not 
here that I acquired the ability to say, 
The occult world is a real, inhabited do- 
main. I know whereof I speak. 



BEYOND. 77 



CHAPTER XII. 

In searching for truth in the fields of 
thought, we often run counter to our own 
prejudices, and almost unconsciously 
call a halt. There are some whose self- 
conceit is so great that they invariably 
do so the moment that any of their prej- 
udices is in the slightest danger of a 
shock. But it is rather to the seeker 
who has in part divested himself from 
this hampering load, which he had 
perhaps inherited like a humor of the 
blood, that I now speak. 

What is to be done ? How proceed 
in such a case ? The remedy is simple. 
Whenever you are dealing with abstract 
ideas, and find one that is refractory, 
either in itself for want of further an- 
alysis, or because of some special weak- 



78 BEYOND. 

ness of yours which incapacitates you 
from subduing it, never give it up ; if 
you do, you will find yourself under it 
like a toad under a stone for an indefi- 
nite length of time. No, the right thing 
to do is to pass at once from the abstract 
to the concrete, and find in material 
things the counterpart of the truth 
under examination, and then proceed. 
The effect is often wonderful. 

To illustrate. Suppose you are ex.- 
amining the abstract idea of the ex- 
pediency of doing right. You may have 
some particular case in mind, probably 
will have, if the decision is to count for 
anything in your life. You may call to 
mind the famous saying, It is better to 
be right, than to be president. You will 
recognize the principle involved in this, 
but is it of universal application? you 
may inquire. Is there not some way 
by which I can take the free-and-easy 
course and yet incur no penalty? A 



BEYOND. 79 

great many people appear to be able to, 
why should not I ? This is the point 
where you need to transfer the case 
from the abstract to the concrete form, 
and ask yourself, Suppose I were mixing 
chemicals according to a certain formula 
to produce a certain compound, and 
suppose one of the ingredients were 
wanting. Should I go ahead and trust 
to luck, and expect to get the compound 
just the same as though I followed the 
directions ? Surely not. What would 
the science of chemistry amount to if 
such a thing were possible ? How could 
anything new be discovered if the gov- 
erning principles could not be depended 
on, or, in other words, if like causes did 
not always produce like effects, and 
unlike causes, unlike effects ? 

The most intrepid explorer in the 
scientific field might well despair of the 
prospect in such a case. But this is 
chemistry, and the laws of conduct are 



80 BEYOND. 

not so rigid, you may say. That is just 
where you miss the path. Until you 
attain to a belief in the unity pervading 
all things, from the lowest to the 
highest, this unity differing in outward 
appearance or manifestation only, and 
not in essential character, you will find 
no peace nor rest. The laws of conduct 
less rigid than the laws of chemistry ? 
Say, rather, infinitely more so. For the 
higher the plane of action, the less like- 
lihood is there of any superior force in- 
terposing to divert the current of events 
from its natural course ; and the laws 
of conduct, remember, pertain to the life 
of the soul, which makes them higher 
than the laws of chemistry by two 
removes, for the laws of health relat- 
ing to the physical body come in be- 
tween. 

But the laws of conduct are not well 
understood, you say. That, indeed, is 
true. We have only a few keys open- 



BEYOND. 81 

ing into this realm of the soul, and most 
people are content to take public opin- 
ion as a sufficient guide rather than 
to take the trouble to explore for them- 
selves. 

But it is the plane just below this, 
that of bodily life and death, which we 
are attempting more especially to eluci- 
date. There seems to be no systematic 
teaching in regard to this that is worthy 
of the name of science. 

The problem of life itself, what it is 
as a force differing from other forces, 
how to deduce from the manifestations 
of vitality what vitality is, remains 
unsolved. And why so ? For a very 
simple reason. Because those who at- 
tempt the problem are unwilling or un- 
able to conform to the conditions which 
they recognize as necessary in all other 
departments of scientific research. They 
do not study life objectively. They may 
think they do. They may think that to 
6 



82 BEYOND. 

study life in other men or in animals is 
a truly objective method, but this is a 
fallacy. 

The theory that life needs to be stud- 
ied from an outside standpoint in order 
to be comprehended, is all right, but 
the man who uses his own life-force in 
studying that of other men or animals 
is not outside the subject of his thought 
at all. The active currents of his own 
being continually intervene to obscure 
the processes of thought and render his 
conclusions valueless. 

It may be true that no other method 
which can be called objective is im- 
mediately apparent, but it does not fol- 
low that there is no other ; and if we 
simply enlarge our ideas of what is 
possible, we shall find the true method 
to be just what we ought rationally to 
expect, and that is this : The student 
who wishes to solve this problem, either 
for his own satisfaction or for the 



BEYOND. 83 

enlightenment of others, must eliminate 
from the problem the one disturbing 
element, his personal life-force. 



84 BEYOND. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Does it seem absurd to say that, in 
order to study life, a man must die ? 
For that is what this method amounts to 
in the last analysis. 

Now, I beg of you not to be unneces- 
sarily alarmed. I have said nothing 
about burial. If death were only another 
name for annihilation, then death and 
burial would be inseparably associated, 
no doubt. But suppose it should be 
true that it is an error to associate the 
thought of annihilation with any man, 
is it not clear that whoever permits 
that error to have any place in his mind 
is sure to give a meaning to the word 
death which does not belong to it ? Is 
it not evident that the thought of 
death in that case must borrow black- 



BEYOND. 85 

ness and mystery of a kind that does 
not pertain to it ? Most surely. But 
let it be said again, that death is a 
reality ; it is not a fiction, nor a mere 
seeming. A man cannot possess bod- 
ily life and at the same time be dead. 
The two conditions are incompatible. 
Otherwise there would be no advantage 
to be gained toward the study of life by 
experiencing its opposite. 

Shall I try to tell you, from the stand- 
point of experience, what death is ? 
Perhaps it will be best to tell you first 
what it is not. It is not a snuffino'-out 

o 

like a candle, unless we could suppose 
one where the spark should remain 
quietly alive until the candle was re- 
lighted. 

It is not a going to sleep, unless we 
assume it possible for the dream-life to 
be woven on to the daytime consciousness 
at both ends without a break, so that the 
dreamer, however strange may have been 



86 BEYOND. 

his dreams, and whatever the testimony 
of others may be, is able to say, with 
conscious truthfulness, I have not slept 
at all. 

Death includes, without question, 
an entire suspension of bodily sensa- 
tions and activities. The conscious, 
ness of being, however, remains, and 
with it, as a necessary consequence, the 
consciousness of being alive, however 
shut in by the enclosing walls of a 
senseless frame. 

What is to follow does not occur to 
the mind. A peace that is absolute 
belongs to a deatli that is clean. Appe- 
tite of every kind is dead with the body. 
Desire is not ; resignation takes its place. 
What is this resignation like ? It in- 
cludes a consciousness of a more potent 
yet kindly will, and contentment with 
the result of the action of that will. 

The Giver has resumed His gift, the 
gift of life, for the benefit of him who 



BEYOND. 87 

has parted with it. The resulting peace 
is permeated with gratitude, not differ- 
ent in kind, although different in mani- 
festation, from that which the little 
child expresses in every motion of his 
happy little body, when he seems to 
say continuously, I am glad to be alive. 
The man is glad to be dead. 

Do you think it impossible that such 
an experience could come to any one 
who should afterwards recover life to 
describe it? Very likely. But stop 
for a moment and consider. When a 
man dies, the result may be said to 
manifest in a twofold way. First : To 
the man himself, who is, to say the 
the least, cut off from his customary 
outward activities. Second : To the 
world at large, where the word is passed 
around, Such a one is dead ; and one 
acquaintance after another, as he hears 
the news, turns to a certain part of his 
mental organism and marks it down in 



88 BEYOND. 

black where it is not likely to be for- 
gotten. Henceforth he will send out 
toward that friend, now become a name 
or memory, a different kind of mental 
current. 

But wait: the word comes, Not dead 
after all — a false report. Immediately 
the operation is reversed. The black 
marks are rubbed out, the little switch 
is re-turned, and the friends all agree, to 
save troublesome thought, that the man 
who was supposed to be dead was not 
really so, and the old question asked by 
Job, If a man die, shall he live again ? 
is prevented once more from obtruding 
itself. 



BEYOND. 89 



CHAPTER XIV. 

My aim is to make this book practi- 
cal, that is, to clothe its thought in such 
garb as to render it available for use, 
not to scholars merely, but to all 
thoughtful minds. 

I shall endeavor in this chapter to 
gather up a few missing links in my 
train of thought, and afterwards en- 
deavor to give you a glimpse of the 
Beyond. The question I seem called 
upon to answer is, How can a man be 
alive and dead at the same time ? and 
in order to answer it, it will be nec- 
essary to analyze the thought called 
death, and separate it into its various 
parts. 

The man is dead, says local report, 
and the consciousness of society under- 



90 BEYOND. 

goes that natural change in regard to 
the man which I have described. 

His name becomes associated with 
things that were, but no longer are. 
Even those who theoretically believe 
that the man continues to live either in 
happiness or misery, have, most of them, 
so little confidence in the theory which 
they have subscribed to, that they never 
dream of putting forth a mental current 
based on the theory. To all intents and 
purposes, society consigns the average 
man to annihilation, with a half-careless 
" Poor fellow, so he's gone. We'll see 
no more of him. "Well, no time to 
weep, seeing as he didn't leave me any- 
thing. What new device for entrapping 
the elusive dollar shall I conjure up 
to-day?" 

I am dead, saj's the man himself as 
the shadows which have been gathering 
upon his senses culminate in a rayless 
silence, and every thought of motion 



BEYOND. 91 

becomes a recollection, a mere theory of 
fancy, that will not even approach the 
dominion of the will. 

Death, as a state of consciousness, is 
a thing entirely new to him, but he can- 
not reason on the subject. To reason 
is to live, to set the brain in motion, to 
perform mental operations ; this is no 
longer possible. 

What shall this state be compared to ? 
It is like that of one isolated in a 
secret cell of his own house, the key 
turned on him from the outside, every 
avenue of communication cut off, dead 
to the world and all that it contains. 
If a total loss of appetite can be associ- 
ated with the state, it might continue 
for an indefinite period ; and if the 
power of thought-transference comes in, 
a new kind of life has been begun. 

But science says that no man is really 
dead who still retains his consciousness, 
by which statement science belies its 



92 BEYOND. 

name. Calling itself knowledge, it 
spreads abroad its own ignorance. How 
many a post-mortem has been held in 
the hope of rinding the secret chamber 
wherein that part of man which cannot 
die has gone to rest! How often the 
sweet peace of death has become a con- 
scious madness, by this means, God 
only knows. Gentlemen, desist. 

To find a chamber whose occupant is 
invisible debars you forever from ob- 
taining the proof that you have found 
it. But perhaps it is not the soul itself 
that is the object of this search, but 
rather some special physical representa- 
tive that might be found still quivering 
with life and so betray its master. All 
folly. 

The soul when uncontaminated in- 
forms the whole outward body. It has 
its pains and illnesses, more or less af- 
fecting the outer form, yet all unrecog- 
nized in materia medica, and when its 



BEYOND. 93 

mortal brother is struck with death, 
bends all its energies to make escape, 
lest it, too, take on mortality. Failing 
in its effort to make a doorway for its 
exit, it suffers for awhile through sym- 
pathy, till the final moment sets it free 
from pain within its small dark house, 
no longer small, because made clear, 
transparent, by the touch of death, when 
the dying has been brave. No trace of 
foreign matter may remain to start a 
dissolution, in which case the soul pre- 
serves the body from decay without 
more trouble than a little watchful 
care. 

Sight, hearing, touch, through vibra- 
tory currents reach round the world and 
even touch the clouds ; the body has 
become, in fact, a mansion perfectly 
adapted to the needs of its proprietor, 
who finds a new world open to his de- 
lighted consciousness, and thanks God 
fervently for his perfect victory over 



94 BEYOND. 

death, as well as for his comfort and 
protection within the white, still walls 
which form, in fact, the first abiding- 
place of the spirit. 

With this still form as passive aid, 
the soul, with little pain, is able to 
make the mental transition which its 
change of circumstance requires. No 
longer concerned directly with any 
thought based on material needs or 
material changes, it finds itself in touch 
with the moral causes which underlie 
these changes ; and because moral force 
is most familiarly manifest in and 
through people, these, and their rela- 
tions to itself, fill all the mental horizon. 

In this new field of perception, noth- 
ing impresses more than the enormous 
differences in spiritual rank and attain- 
ment existing among mortals who, 
judged by tape-line aucl scale, stood 
fairly equal, and whom human law 
necessarily places on a plane of perfect 



BEYOND. 95 

equality, or perhaps, through its defer- 
ence to wealth, makes unequal in the 
wrong way. 

The thoroughness with which past 
illusions are stripped away from the 
mind tends to leave the spirit fairly 
aghast at its previous blindness. 

Frequently forgetting that the motor 
nerves of the physical form are no 
longer responsive to its touch, it starts 
to rise, that it may go and tell the 
world of these wonders just discovered, 
but finds itself in the firm and quiet 
grasp of death, a touch that seems to 
speak and say : 

" Never mind ; that is all right. You 
forget you are not free. Lie still and 
learn your lesson." 

" But shall I not return ? " 

"Possibly, but the mortal life is no 
concern of yours at present. You are 
dead." 

All this as in a flash, for words do 



96 BEYOND. 

not belong to this state, ideas rather, 
the spiritual essences of thought that 
seem to need no time whatever to make 
their mark upon the mind. 

To some of these the mind is so re- 
ceptive that they sink at once to the 
very core of being, while others are 
held upon the surface. 

This last communication, You are 
dead, is sure to be so held. It seems 
such an evident conclusion to respond, 
If I am dead, there is no death ; but 
this seems such a contradiction to life's 
long lesson, namely, that amidst a wil- 
derness of uncertainties, death is the one 
thing certain. And then the recollec- 
tion of the shrinking of the soul at 
thought of death, how to account for 
that, if there were no reality behind 
appearances so countless? 

This in another flash of ideation that 
leaves a sense of mystery as of a problem 
not worked out, and which may not be 



BEYOND. 97 

while death as a condition rests upon 
the form. I say, may not be, but 
would not be understood to mean that 
the hindrance is mechanical in this case. 
A pure soul, even in death, has certain 
reserve forces which can be put in action 
if the need is great enough, but the 
consciousness of being in a friend's con- 
trol, especially when that control is 
apparently absolute, will tend to check 
all restless impulse in this region of the 
dark, till now all unexplored. 
7 



BEYOND. 



CHAPTER XV. 

But if the soul might not take up 
and solve the problem for want of time 
and space, we at this writing are not so 
limited. 

First, let us state it clearly. If death 
does not mean a loss of consciousness 
necessarily, what is its distinguishing 
feature as compared with life? And 
what, if anything, is there in it to dread ? 
The confusion of mind so general on 
these topics can be accounted for in a 
very simple manner. 

The body has its life and its death, 
and the soul has its life and its death, 
and we have but two words to describe 
the four conditions. This makes it so 
nearly impossible to generalize on the 



BEYOND. 99 

subject and at the same time maintain 
clearness. 

For while the student of natural his- 
tory attributes life and death to the body 
alone, and the idealist goes to the other 
extreme and makes life and death purely 
subjective — attributes of mind, not mat- 
ter — the philosopher who would have 
his mind open on both sides, not only to 
those thoughts which enter unheralded, 
but also to those which seem to have 
their origin in physical vibrations and 
enter the sensorium through the body, 
— the philosopher, I say, finds it neces- 
sary to discriminate carefully in the use 
of these words, life and death, and to 
make it clear which is meant, the body 
or the soul, whenever he attributes 
either condition to man. 

I have said the two words cover four 
conditions. What are they ? In the 
first the body is alive, and the soul is 
alive. Beautiful condition of ingenuous 



100 BEYOND. 

youth ! In the second, the body is alive, 
and the soul dead. The man who by 
a course of persistent indulgence in 
all manner of crime and sensuality has 
stifled the voice of conscience, and 
finally reached the point where he is 
ready to say, " Evil, be thou my good," 
attains to a form of quiet. 

The soul dies, and its decaying 
powers are absorbed by the body, which 
becomes henceforth an embodied poison, 
most dangerous and even deadly to the 
contact of the sensitive. 

The third condition is that of the 
soul first described, in which the body 
has either temporarily or permanently 
parted with its life, while the soul re- 
mains intact. Still a part of the world's 
seething life, because action and reaction 
of the powerful causative soul-currents 
continue with such a soul, the interment 
of the body will decide whether the 
temporary physical death shall become 



BEYOND. 101 

permanent or not. In those exceptional 
cases where the body is preserved from 
the paroxysms of a blind grief which, 
when they include contact, tend to snap 
the last thread of vitality, or, still more 
important, from the embalmer's igno- 
rant knife, which slays unnumbered 
thousands — when the body is preserved 
from both these dangers by a previ- 
ous isolation, great possibilities are in 
store. 

A forty-days' fast in the wilderness 
was the experience of one such soul, 
after which he was able to say of his 
bodily life, No man taketh it from me, 
but I lay it down of myself. I have 
power to lay it down, and I have power 
to take it again. 

For his bodily life was restored to him, 
and death of the body had no more 
terrors to the man who had attained 
superhuman powers. 

The fourth and last case, that where 



102 BEYOND. 

the death of the body follows that of 
the soul, will not be enlarged on. 

There are such cases, but such can 
receive no lessons from a printed page. 
The language of events alone can reach 
them, and even when the soul is not 
dead, but rather entombed in the body, 
and rendered torpid for want of air to 
breathe, the effect is the same, so far as 
reaching them is concerned ; the death 
of the body wakens such imprisoned 
spirits,only to plunge them into an untold 
agony of despair as they discover that 
life, witli all its opportunities, has been 
worse than wasted, and a bare existence 
alone remains, minus friends, minus 
hope, minus resource of any kind even 
to conceal the abject poverty which is 
seen to be the direct result of wilful and 
persistent wrongdoing all the way to 
the bitter end. 

Tf we can suppose that such a soul, at 
this twelfth hour, under the tremendous 



BEYOND. 103 

pressure of this awakening, should sud- 
denly resolve to accept the situation, 
and to brace every nerve to endure the 
horrors of the event without complaint, 
while it would not be possible to say 
when there would be any change for the 
better for such a one, the reason would 
be because time is not to such a soul ; 
while it still remains true that mercy is 
as truly an attribute of infinite power, 
as justice must always be. 

If, on the other hand, we suppose that 
such a soul breaks out into rage at the 
discovery of its loss, hurling anathemas 
at the author of its being, it will thereby 
plunge itself into darker depths, parting 
with one after another of its faculties, 
until final extinction of the individuality 
closes the scene. 

I have now shown the four conditions 
which our dual constitution in relation to 
life and death makes possible. Some 
enlarging on these topics, which concern 



104 BEYOND. 

us all, may not be unprofitable. We all 
enter life in the first described condition, 
with body and soul both alive, the body 
visible and tangible, the soul more or 
less so, according as its environments 
since conception have favored its 
growth. 

Comparatively few of us ever reach 
the second condition I have described, in 
which the body remains alive while the 
soul is utterly dead. The protests of 
this, which is called the immortal part 
of us, because the death of the body in 
itself does not impair its vigor, usually 
prevent so great a calamity from occur- 
ring. 

Some kind of a compromise is entered 
into, by which the soul is allowed a 
certain amount of freedom, on condi- 
tion that the body shall remain undis- 
turbed in its favorite pleasures. Some- 
times one day in the week is selected, 
in which the soul is permitted to rule. 



BEYOND. 105 

Sometimes a single department of 
life's activities is placed under its charge, 
and to meet the man on the favored 
clay, or to have dealings with him in 
this favored department, gives you a 
very exalted idea of the individual. 
Sometimes in his business relations a 
man will be found conscientious in the 
extreme, while in his family he acts the 
tyrant and the brute. Sometimes his 
family almost worship him, while thou- 
sands speak his name with detestation. 
In either case the body, not the soul, 
the outer and visible, not the inner in- 
visible self, is the leading factor in the 
man, and the court of last resort. 

The man is still in slavery to the 
mortal ; he has no knowledge of any 
life except the earth-life ; the faith- 
knowledge which he might have, were 
his soul given its freedom and per- 
mitted to use its higher powers, is shut 
out by the disorder of his condition, 



106 BEYOND. 

wherein a servant in rank, the body, 
rules over the prince entitled to the 
throne. 

This is the prevailing condition of 
the human family to-day, the difference 
between most people in this respect be- 
ing merely one of degree, some giving 
the prince more, and some less of free- 
dom. A few millions at most have 
given the nominal power into his hands, 
retaining the real for bodily uses. To 
curry favor with these, tens of millions 
profess to have done the same. In thou- 
sands only is the soul truly regnant, 
and these are widely scattered, and 
more or less hidden, lest they be driven 
out of life. 



BEYOND. 107 



CHAPTER XVI. 

When I say that I have been out- 
side and have returned, I speak the 
truth, and yet my words seem to ex- 
press an untruth. It is because, as I 
have said before, that other kind of 
existence is so different from this that 
it uses a different language to express 
even a simple idea, a language which 
the kind we know as figurative most 
nearly resembles, although that is far 
enough from being the same. I should 
therefore use figurative language to em- 
body what I have to say in regard to 
that other life, if literary considerations 
were alone to be regarded ; but my aim 
is to benefit, and I decline to use a form 
of speech which has been so often sold 
as merchandise that many people no 



108 BEYOND. 

longer believe there is any truth at- 
tached to it. I use instead the plain, 
everyday speech, and say without qual- 
ification that I have been away, that I 
am acquainted with the conditions that 
follow after death, that I lean on no 
man's theories, not even on those which 
I might make, if I were given to theo- 
rizing, which I am not. No, I rest on 
facts, plain, cold facts, which are none 
the less so because they are registered 
in the mind of one man instead of many ; 
facts of consciousness not to be gainsaid, 
although, in order to express them so as 
to make them most useful here, it is 
necessary to translate them into a lan- 
guage so far from the original, that only 
those who keep the fact of the transla- 
tion in mind can hope to receive the 
truth in something like its purity. 

I am well aware that I can scarcely 
hope to convince my reader that it could 
be possible under any circumstances for 



BEYOND. 109 

one to enter the kingdom of the dead, 
to take on the powers and conditions 
belonging to that realm, to become a 
component part of that world of mystery 
to the extent of dismissing all care in 
regard to the possibility of return, and 
even to transmit such a thought-mes- 
sage as this. The responsibility for my 
being out of place rests upon you all ; I 
was compelled to undergo the pain of 
the passage at your will ; and now that 
you repent and ask me to return, I will 
take my time and think about it. I am 
well housed in a good body on this side. 
I do not know that I would go back if I 
could. 

That, after all this, and after a suc- 
cession of spiritual events which, meas- 
ured by their effect on one's conscious- 
ness, should correspond to a period of 
centuries on earth, one should actually 
make his way back and take up again 
the broken threads of his earthly life, 



110 BEYOND. 

and weave them into something resem- 
bling an orderly design once more, — to 
convince my readers of the possibility 
of this is so nearly impossible that I 
shall not seriously attempt it, although 
it is true. 

It will be said that even though I 
suppose that this is actually true of my- 
self, it does not follow that I am not 
suffering from an hallucination. 

It will be argued very naturally that 
in so far as I am now a tangible, actual 
human being, just so far is it impossible 
that I should ever have been actually 
dead ; and as to becoming habituated to 
the kind of life which may remain after 
the body loses its animation, for any one 
now living to make such a claim is the 
height of absurdity. 

Any one who shall take this stand will 
need to be reminded that bodily con- 
sciousness is one thing, and soul-con- 
sciousness another, and that there may 



BEYOND. HI 

be spiritual existence beyond that. 
Comparatively few mortals have not at 
some time in their lives awakened at 
least momentarily to soul-consciousness, 
and can remember, if they care to try, 
how suddenly and completely the bodily 
consciousness retired into the back- 
ground at its coming. 

Thousands can testify that this soul- 
consciousness in them so dominates that 
of the body as to render bodily pains 
powerless to disturb the regnant soul. 

These may be able to understand that 
in the world toward which they hasten, 
another advance will become possible, 
wherein the soul-consciousness shall be- 
come subordinate to the higher life of 
the spirit. 

To make this a little clearer let me 
say that what you are now conscious of 
as your soul, the sensitive inner nature, 
that feels a slight as though it were a 
blow, that spurs the organism to years 



112 BEYOND. 

of anxious toil in the hope of gaining 
independence, that scorns to beg, yet in 
the hour of danger sometimes feels to 
pray — this inner self is to be your body 
when death shall come to break the tie 
that holds you captive in the dust. 
Every consideration to which your soul 
is now sensitive shall become, as it were, 
the laws of nature then. You will sud- 
denly discover that ill-will, for instance, 
is a current actually tangible, as much 
so as an electric current was to your 
physical body. You will learn experi- 
mentally that kindliness of spirit, good- 
will, and gratitude are equally tangible 
to your new and finer senses. You will 
perceive that a generous spirit diffuses 
light, and a selfish one dwells in his own 
darkness, and this kind of light and 
darkness you will be astonished to dis- 
cover has taken the place of what you 
formerly knew by those names. You 
will soon perceive that a deceiving 



BEYOND. 113 

spirit knows how to wear a false light 
as he pretends to a genuine interest in 
your welfare, and that a truly friendly 
one will sometimes hide his light, if 
thereby he can obtain advantage for 
your benefit. 

If your life has been little more than 
a revolution around yourself, measuring 
everything by its relation to your per- 
sonal advantage as you saw it, you will 
be surprised to find how small and dark 
a space will bound your being ; and it 
may be a long time before you cease to 
dwell upon the memories of the world 
left behind, or cease to hope that in 
some way you can return to make a 
better use of its opportunities. And 
when you shall fairly come to under- 
stand that you have been living in the 
generous air and sunshine of the spirit 
of God, and that, instead of seeking to 
imitate Him by making your life a bless- 
ing to those less favored than yourself, 



114 BEYOND. 

you have employed your brief span in 
the effort to appropriate to your private 
use everything that could be lawfully 
seized on, you will wonder why the cer- 
tainty that earth-life is limited had not 
impressed you more ; and when you 
perceive, through the soul-consciousness 
which has taken the place of the bodily, 
that you have no data whatever upon 
which to base even a surmise as to how 
long your new kind of life is to continue, 
such measureless despair may fall upon 
you as shall even make tears impos- 
sible. 



BEYOND. 115 



CHAPTER XVII. 

On the other hand, if anywhere along 
your life-journey you have scattered 
any seeds of kindness, they will every 
one of them bear fruit in the Beyond. 

From the moment when you perceive 
and acknowledge to yourself that you 
are not in every way fitted to enter the 
courts of heaven and become associated 
with those to whom selfish thoughts 
have become simply memories, you are 
likely to have experiences tending to 
refine and purify your nature. No 
longer active in the outward, you must 
bear what influences come upon you from 
without as best you may. An infant in 
the cradle is not more helpless than the 
great majority of those who enter the 
Beyond ; and the invisible nurse that 



116 BEYOND. 

may have you in charge will not ask 
you what kind of medicine is most 
agreeable, but will administer what is 
best for you. 

Picture to your mind, if possible, 
what it would be like to lie physically 
helpless, with your outward conscious- 
ness telling you that you no longer ap- 
pear as a man, or as a woman, but only 
as an infant to any eyes able to see you, 
while at the same time your mental 
vision is perfectly clear and takes in all 
your past life in every aspect of its re- 
lation to other lives, and especially in 
its relations to the great all-pervading 
life which seems now to be somehow 
lost out of all possible reach. 

Suppose that while those reactions 
called pain and pleasure are more vitally 
potent than ever, because of a vastly 
heightened sensitiveness, mental as well 
as physical exertion has become im- 
possible, a succession of states of con- 



BEYOND. 117 

sciousness taking their place ; and then 
suppose a master hand, with all the re- 
sources of mesmerism at his command, 
should begin playing upon your or- 
ganism, proving to you by every touch 
that not a line of all your past history 
but is an open book to him, and his only 
aim is to bring you to a willingness to 
confess your weaknesses and follies, your 
neglect of duties, as well as your open 
transgressions — one thing at least 
would surely result : you would dis- 
cover, and never forget, that spiritual 
things are not less, but immensely more 
real than any physical entities with 
which you ever came in contact. 

It is such a great mistake to suppose 
that because you have nothing in your 
experience corresponding to such a con- 
dition as that which I have just de- 
scribed, therefore you never will have. 

What kind of reasoning can be 
weaker than this ? Have you not two 



118 BEYOND. 

kinds of consciousness, one of the world 
and all it contains, and one of personal 
existence in its various relations ? Do 
you not perceive that your body, vitally 
active as it is, and swayed by every 
thought you send out, belongs properly 
to the first of these fields of conscious- 
ness, while that which makes up your 
character — your preferences, your pre- 
dilections, your faults, your foibles, 
your beliefs, and your prejudices — be- 
longs to the second? 

Can you not see that a suspension of 
the outward consciousness, in other 
words, a suspension of your power to 
sense the material world through your 
material senses, has no necessary con- 
nection with any suspension of your 
inner consciousness by which you might 
be able to say, I cannot move ; I cannot 
see, hear, or feel anything, but I am 
still a white man, ready to swear by the 
flag and by my right to my personal 



BEYOND. 119 

liberty, and if any one takes the trouble 
to hunt me out he will find me the 
same man I always was? 

Hundreds of thousands thus lie in 
their graves, thankful if they know its 
location, and Avaiting as only the dead 
can for the time of their deliverance. 



120 BEYOND. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

Accept another glimpse of the Be- 
yond. One of the most distinctive 
characteristics of this country or state 
of being is activity of mind. Let me 
explain why I say country or state of 
being. It is either the one or the other 
to the consciousness according to the 
point of view. Looked at externally, 
it is seen to be a new environment, a 
different kind of life ; but when its at- 
mosphere becomes yours, the effect upon 
your mental organism will be so great 
that you will rightly regard it as a state 
of being to which earth-life bears the 
relation of a pre-natal one. This com- 
parison, however, has one defect, for 
while we of the earth have no conscious 
memory of our pre-natal life, they of 



BEYOND. 121 

the Beyond recall every leading event 
of earth-life as clearly as though no time 
had intervened. 

The change of state brings on the 
mental activity spoken of, the effect of 
which on the material side manifests as 
heat or magnetism, or both. 

The lifting off of the weight of dead 
matter causes a feeling of buoyancy, and 
the vibrations of the particles of the 
gaseous body may be so great that it 
will seem to expand until one seems 
everywhere present over a vast territory 
in the same way that we are now pres- 
ent in all parts of our physical bodies. 

The first event of prime importance 
to you will be the demonstrating and 
establishing of your spiritual rank. 
Just where do 3*011 belong ? In the 
society of what people, or what class of 
people, are you content ? Does any ac- 
cusation lie against you ? If so, what 
have you to say in regard to it? 



122 BEYOND. 

Are there any special credits that you 
claim which seem never to have been 
acknowledged ? Is there anything you 
wish to confess? To what conceal- 
ment do you claim a right ? 

The answering of these questions may 
be a very simple matter, or may involve 
the Avelfare of nations. While the 
friends left behind will contribute their 
quota of evidence, those with whom you 
have been associated who have preceded 
you to the unknown country will be the 
most actively interested in jour case. 
You will find some waiting for your 
testimony on some point involving their 
own status, and when you come to speak 
of the matter you may have to struggle 
against a tumult of voices before you 
succeed in testifying. Where questions 
of fact are involved, of sufficient im- 
portance to justify it, most wonderful 
agencies can be set in motion to deter- 



BEYOND. 123 

mine them correctly in the region of the 
Beyond. 

That precise point in the ether where 
the event occurred, and which has long 
since been left behind by the passage of 
the solar system through space, can be 
visited and made to yield up its record 
as by kinetograph ; or the surroundings 
may be reproduced as on a stage, and 
the one who persists in falsifying is sud- 
denly placed there and told to act his 
part again according to his own story. 
He will find it very difficult to play a 
false part in the presence of those who 
know the truth. 

It may be noted that this picture of a 
soul on trial is quite different from that 
given before, where it is held as the 
prisoner of death; but it is only neces- 
sary to bear in mind that events may 
succeed each other even in a country 
where time is not, and that such succes- 
sion marks the stages of one's growth. 



124 BEYOND. 

If any of your faculties are in a dull 
or torpid state because the circumstances 
of your life have been such that they 
never have been given a field of action, 
the invisible actors of the Beyond who 
may have you in charge will know how 
to awaken, stimulate, and call these 
faculties into an active state before the 
final decision is rendered, to the end 
that no injustice may be done you on 
their account. Should the verdict of 
the lower court be such that you are not 
willing to abide by it, you may take an 
appeal to a higher court. 

At the last you may even appeal from 
the judgment of angels altogether, and 
demand a trial by the great Spirit of the 
universe, but you will not do this reck- 
lessly when you know that it involves a 
trial by ordeal, or a contest of sheer will- 
power, sustained by conscious innocence 
alone, with planetary forces. 

Not brief nor trifling is a contest such 



BEYOND. 125 

as this ; not once in a thousand years 
does such a thing occur ; but the fact 
that the way to it is always open in the 
Beyond proves with what infinite tender- 
ness the individual is guarded against 
injustice. 

But it is impossible that I should 
know of what I am speaking, some 
reader says. I grant you that it seems 
so, but would discussion settle it ? Is 
it not time the door was opened ? Is 
there no need ? 



126 BEYOND. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

An illustration of the difficulty of 
generalizing when speaking of matters 
on the spirit-side just now occurs to me. 

Suppose that you as a mortal were 
permitted to witness a combat between 
a soul on its way upward and a foul 
spirit seeking to gain control. The 
spirit may be able to take on any form 
it pleases, and approaches in the guise 
of a friend. But the soul receives a 
warning touch and speaks out sharply : 
" Stand ; keep your distance. Who are 
you ? and what do you want ? " With 
every smooth and crafty method of tone 
and word the spirit seeks to convince 
that he is what he claims to be, a friend, 
and entitled to approach. The soul, 
with its senses sharpened by fear, uses 



BEYOND. 127 

every effort to discern the character of 
the stranger, weighs and analyzes in- 
stantly every expression of the wily foe, 
and before the answer is completed, 
decides positively and prepares to strike. 
The spirit perceives the motion and 
shifts his footing in time to escape the 
blow — a thought-impulse, weighted to 
kill. Does the spirit respond in anger ? 
Oh, no ; his object is not to injure, 
but to gain control, so he remonstrates, 
with pretended grief, that one whom he 
loves should so mistake him. But the 
soul is not to be deceived, and gathers up 
its strength for another blow. The spirit 
pours out a perfect stream of flattering 
words, intended to lull his intended vic- 
tim into a momentary lack of vigilance, 
and ventures a little nearer, hoping to 
touch the aura and disappear from view, 
only to become manifest as an invisible 
power within the soul, an active agent 
in undermining its powers until the 



128 BEYOND. 

opportunity shall present to seize the 
very throne itself and revel in the 
possessions of its victim. 

But the soul is cautious, and in virtue 
strong, and so, conscious of invisible 
protection, suddenly fixes the demon 
with his eye, and before he can escape 
launches at him a bolt that leaves him 
helpless and writhing, dead as a spirit can 
be. " I killed him," says the exulting 
soul, as it passes on its way. 

You would be apt to say, " He did 
not kill him at all ; he only disabled him." 

Now, while it is true that what I have 
described corresponds in appearance to 
what we should here call disablement 
merely, its full meaning cannot be under- 
stood without entering the conscious- 
ness of the spirit who was struck down. 

To such a one activity, or the ability 
to act, constitutes life ; inactivity, or 
the inability to act, constitutes death, 
not death as we know it, but a living 



BEYOND. 129 

death, in which the fierce vibrations of 
a life that knows no end, being con- 
fined as though by a broken wheel in 
its carriage, — being confined, I say, to 
the gaseous envelope, the propulsion of 
which has absorbed half its fire, soon 
heats the envelope to a torturing degree. 
Illustrating in another way, the evil 
spirit, being disabled from continuing 
his customary activity, is forced to re- 
flect, to look back over his course, and 
face the evils he has done. Horrors 
take hold of him. The most poignant 
dread of being overtaken by those 
whom he has despoiled of all that made 
life dear, until in despair they have 
committed suicide, and started out to 
find their tormentor, takes hold of the 
miserable wreck, who has not even the 
consolation of looking forward to some 
certain end to his sufferings, because 
neither time nor the last sleep are 
known in the region of the dead. 
9 



130 BEYOND. 

Is this experience, do you think, any- 
less to be dreaded by a selfish spirit 
than is death by a mortal who is con- 
sciously not ready? It is therefore 
properly called death in the language 
of the spirit, made up, as that language 
is, of ideas only. 

But in calling it death on the earth- 
plane we are using a word that has a 
much different meaning here. 

When we say, " The man is dead," a 
funeral, or at least a burial is suggest- 
ed. Not so there. 

In this we have an example of the 
difficulty of conveying information in 
regard to the conditions of the Beyond, 
without using words that are liable to 
be misunderstood. 

Only those who have attained to the 
ability to converse in the light, eye to 
eye, without words, are entirely free 
from these obstructions to mental in- 
tercourse. 



BEYOND. 131 



CHAPTER XX. 

Astronomy teaches us that our 
earth, together with the other members 
of the solar system, is traveling 
through space, at the rate of eight miles 
per second, around a distant center, in 
an orbit requiring many thousands of 
years to complete. 

We learn from this that we are con- 
stantly changing our place in the 
universe, and are entering new etherean 
fields, not only every year, but every 
day and hour. Since we are uncon- 
scious of this motion, it may seem to 
have no vital relation to us, yet, by a 
knowledge of the fact, we may gain an 
insight into the wonderful resources of 
this great machine for recording events. 

Every thought and feeling of which 



182 BEYOND. 

we are conscious makes its mark, not 
only upon our bodies, both the outer 
and the inner, but also upon the ether 
through which we are passing. I am al- 
luding not to the words in which we 
clothe or perhaps conceal our thoughts 
or feelings when communicating with 
one another, but to the thought-current 
itself at the point of origin. 

This would be the same in the minds 
of all men of equal intelligence, with- 
out regard to nationality ; and those 
beings who are able to read the marks 
left by these currents would find them 
written in unmistakable characters, 
and of a size proportionate to our rate 
of travel, on the fair ethereal page. 

In one respect we are at an enormous 
disadvantage in our relations, conscious 
or unconscious, with the denizens of the 
Beyond. 

Our thought-motions compared with 
theirs are like an ox-team to a locomo- 



BEYOND. 133 

tive. It is a fact, and there is no use in 
quarreling with it. On the other hand, 
through our association with matter we 
are able, without permanent injury, to 
bear oppressions of the spirit which 
would be death itself to them ; and 
those among them who would take de- 
light in insulting us are deterred from 
doing so by our insensibility to the 
stinging thought-current. We our- 
selves would not insult a post for being 
one. 

These oppressions of spirit, or depres- 
sions, as we blindly call them, are a part 
of the system by and through which we 
are made to manifest what manner of 
person we are ; and our blindness as to 
the real meaning of the life we have 
come into possession of, our persistent 
mistaking it for an end, instead of a 
means to an end, brings it to pass that 
the tests we undergo as to our fitness 
for this or that position in the real 



134 BEYOND. 

though hidden life that awaits us all, 
are real and genuine tests, which they 
could not be, to their full extent, if we 
clearly understood at the time just what 
was being done. Every thoughtful 
man and woman looking back over life 
can discern how this or that decision 
has been a turning-point leading on to 
unexpected success or paving the way 
to disaster or defeat. When the test is 
complete, some inkling of its meaning 
often dawns upon us, and we resolve to 
be on guard next time, and then per- 
haps we start off on some rainbow chase, 
only to discover that we are the prey of 
delusion once more. Then, perhaps, we 
get angry and curse the whole machine 
as the product of some stupid blunder- 
er, thereby avoiding the confession of 
any mental obliquity on our own part. 

Not all of the delusions of mortality 
are of a kind that lead to such a result. 
Some have been imposed upon us by 



BEYOND. 135 

our risen brothers of the other sphere, 
and have held sway over our minds, as 
they did over our fathers' minds, and 
over their fathers' before them, none of 
us living long enough on the mortal 
side, or obtaining sufficiently clear in- 
dependent light, to enable us to become 
free. The shaking off of the fetters of 
this mental bondage is a special char- 
acteristic of our own day ; and those who 
have listened to the torrents of elo- 
quence poured from the lips of the young 
mediums upon this subject, know that 
this work, the necessity for which, as I 
have indicated, is largely due to other- 
world intelligences, is now being for- 
warded from the same quarter with 
tremendous power. Verily, there must 
have been a revolution in the heavens, 
or this would not be. And such, in- 
deed, is the case. The tremendous 
power of an organized hierarchy under 
the controlling influence of a single 



136 BEYOND. 

mind so prominently in evidence here, 
is without a counterpart on the other 
side to-day, although the sins against hu- 
manity which have been charged against 
the priesthood of past ages should more 
properly be laid at the door of their in- 
visible inspirers, then in the height of 
that power which is no longer theirs. 
To-day the enemies of racial progress 
are to be sought for on earth, where the 
intoxicating dreams of power without 
responsibility have found lodgment and 
worked their corrupting influence in the 
minds of not a few of our brothers, who 
seem to forget that they are still mem- 
bers of the race they are seeking to 
enslave, and that their responsibility for 
misusing the power entrusted to them 
will be accounted all the greater in con- 
sequence. 



BEYOND. 137 



CHAPTER XXI. 

The range of subjects coming within 
the scope of my title is so great that I 
cannot undertake an exhaustive treat- 
ment of any within reasonable limits, 
but I hope to supply a few keys by 
the use of which reverent minds of any 
and every school of thought may be 
able to enter upon successful explora- 
tions. 

The amount of evidence necessary to 
convince a sincere inquirer that this 
earth-life, important as it is, is but the 
threshold of existence, is not very great, 
but it must needs be adapted to the 
individual mind. 

To obtain this evidence is worth more 
to any man or woman than any other 
purely mental acquirement can be. 



138 BEYOND. 

For it is a mental acquisition, the 
possession of which is related to, and 
has a natural influence over, every other 
we can call our own. Yet it has not, in 
itself, any transforming effect upon the 
life and character. 

When such a result follows, other in- 
fluences share in the work. He who 
has lost friends that were a part of his 
life, the mother whose children have 
fainted away into the world of mystery, 
the philosopher who has given the 
strength of his years to the search for 
truth, are all profoundly affected by the 
discovery; while those in whom the af- 
fections are less strongly developed, or 
whose mental powers give them no ade- 
quate perception of the profound and 
far-reaching relations of this great truth, 
may hold it as lightly as they do their 
dreams, and receive from it no more 
benefit than they do from them. 

Whoever is capable of analyzing a 



BEYOND. 189 

thought or the expression of a thought, 
can find evidence of the world beyond 
strewn along his path on every hand. 

All figurative expressions are merely 
unconscious devices to give to thought 
somewhat of the objective reality it pos- 
sesses to dwellers in the Beyond. For 
instance : 

" There are names which carry with 
them something of a charm. We have 
but to say ' Athens,' and all the great 
deeds of antiquity break upon our 
hearts like a sudden gleam of sunshine ; 
' Florence,' and the magnificence and 
passionate agitation of Italy's prime 
send forth their fragrance towards us 
like blossom-laden boughs, from whose 
dusky shadows we catch whispers of the 
beautiful tongue." 

Is it doubted that the Athens of 
which the author speaks will be found 
embodied in forms real and tangible in 
that other world which takes to itself 



140 BEYOND. 

all that attains to immortality in this 
one ? 

Why do authors speak of a cold greet- 
ing, of walls of reserve, rivers of kind- 
ness, or the sunshine of love ? 

They may not be able fully to ex- 
plain, but expressions like these point 
to features of the landscape in that 
world where the inner becomes the 
outer and takes on those garments of 
reality which belong to it by right. 

The things which are seen are tem- 
poral, but the things which are unseen 
are eternal, and when we have broken 
connection with our temporal bodies, or 
attained a true and perfect control over 
them, we may enter into this knowl- 
edge, to find it truly a heavenly inher- 
itance. 

But it is not alone through figurative 
and poetic language that we may dis- 
cover evidence of the existence of an 
immaterial world. 



BEYOND. 141 

The broad fields of philosophy and 
literary criticism receive their light, 
their water, and their air, outside the 
world of sense almost entirely. Scarce 
anything in these domains has any 
causative relation with the world of 
matter. 

For instance, take this passage from 
one of the magazines : 

" But what does the work of higher 
criticism really mean ? It means, 
briefly, as applied to the Old Testament, 
the revision of certain traditions con- 
cerning the structure, the date, the au- 
thorship of the books — traditions which 
had their origin in the fanciful and un- 
critical circles of Judaism just before, or 
soon after, the Christian era." * 

A careful analysis of the meaning of 
this will show that it begins and ends 
in the domain of abstract thought. To 

* The Arena, January, 1894, " The Higher 
Criticism." 



142 BEYOND. 

use a figurative expression, it does not 
touch the ground anywhere. If our 
bodies and their needs, if the earth and 
its products which minister to those 
needs, if, in brief, the material universe 
really comprised the all that is, such a 
thought as is contained in the passage 
quoted could never have come into 
being. For it has no practical relation 
to things as such. 

Yet there is nothing especially ob- 
scure about it. It was written for men 
and women of ordinary intelligence, 
who are supposed to take an interest 
not merely in sacred truths, which, 
indeed, are not dealt with in the article 
from which I quote, but the structural 
forms containing those truths. 

All of which, rightly interpreted, 
points to another phase of existence, 
which is either near to or far from us 
according to the stage of our develop- 
ment, a phase which may become meas- 



BEYOND. 143 

urably real to us even before we enter 
fully upon it, and which has the 
strongest possible claims upon our 
attention. 



144 BEYOND. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

There is no more fruitful source of 
error to the student of occult philoso- 
phy than the assumption which he con- 
tinually makes, that the race and the 
individual may be treated as one when 
their relations to a higher power are 
being considered. 

It appears that the study of the laws 
of chemistry may be partly responsible 
for this. A molecule of any substance, 
having in itself all the properties of 
that substance, may be reasoned upon 
and regarded as though it were, as it is, 
an epitome of the mass. In the same 
way it is assumed that man, the indi- 
vidual, is an epitome of the race, and 
that, in endeavoring to obtain a philo- 
sophical view of him, we may pass in 



BEYOND. 145 

review before the mind what we know 
of the race, and what we know of the 
individual in a general way, without 
drawing any line of distinction between 
what is true of the one and what is true 
of the other. 

Now, while this mental process may 
have a certain value when both are con- 
sidered externally, those who attempt 
to solve the deeper problems of the race 
or the man, by means of it, are sure to 
fall into error. 

It is not borne in mind that our race 
is scarcely conscious of itself as a unit, 
and if it were, it would in the present 
state of knowledge regard itself as alone 
in the universe, flying through space on 
a revolving globe with enormous veloc- 
ity, along an unknown orbit. There 
may be other inhabited worlds peopled 
by other races of beings, but as a race 
we do not know this to be true ; and 
only a dim perception of the survival of 
10 



146 BEYOND. 

a few of its own members that have lived 
their little lives and passed away since 
time began, relieves the sense of isola- 
tion with which the race looks out into 
the surrounding darkness. 

The student of history contemplates 
the rise and fall of nations and traces 
the causes which have led to their over- 
throw. He observes the same influ- 
ences at work to-day as in the olden 
time, and when the premonition of like 
disasters comes home to him, he is ready 
to exclaim, " There is no hope ! There 
is no Gocl ! " And in so speaking he 
gives utterance to the soul of our race, 
which is still groping in the darkness 
for light and a place of rest. 

How much of this is true of man as 
an individual? Very little, compara- 
tively, as we shall see. In the first 
place, as individuals, we are conscious 
of companionship. We look around us 
and out over the world and see great 



BEYOND. 147 

numbers of our fellows whose life and 
surroundings are comparable with our 
own. Such differences as we perceive 
in each other only give evidence that 
our fellow-beings are real, not simply 
reflections of ourselves ; are objective 
entities, not elusive shadows. And by 
as much as we are conscious of an indi- 
viduality apart from that of our race, by 
so much may we hope to separate the 
thread of our destiny from the tangled 
mass. Examples of such a separation 
are to be found among the great names 
of the earth ; and a study of their lives 
will teach us how best to shape our 
own. It will also teach us that race- 
life and individual life are not neces- 
sarily the same, that the individual may 
absorb light for which the race is not 
yet ready, and set his standards of 
thought and action far beyond what is 
yet possible to the race as a whole . 
If, now, we form our conceptions of 



148 BEYOND. 

the character of the power overruling 
us, by an exclusive study of those events 
which affect great numbers, we are li- 
able to serious error. If the sound of 
thunders intended for the ear of the 
race be concentrated so as to fall upon 
our individual hearing, they will cer- 
tainly deafen us completely. 

On the other hand, those whose nar- 
rower vision sees only the play of events 
as they affect the lives of individuals 
are also liable to error in forming their 
estimate of the character of the over- 
ruling power. 

Here tragedy visible and invisible 
plays its part, and sometimes injustice in 
the extreme appears to triumph. There 
is no possibility of avoiding error in judg- 
ment from this point of view, without 
constantly bearing in mind at least three 
things : first, that outward disaster is 
sometimes an inevitable result of long- 
hidden crime ; second, that to the inno- 



BEYOND. 149 

cent, death is a release from prison, 
a promotion from a lower to a higher 
sphere of action, and that those who are 
able to look beyond the instruments used 
to break their fetters, to the kindness 
that sets them free, can mount on the 
wings of delight to a diviner air ; and 
third, that the dwarfing of the faculties 
of a soul during the short space of earth- 
life will turn out to be a far less serious 
matter to the soul than to the one re- 
sponsible for it. 



150 BEYOND. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

The question may be asked, Wherein 
lies the difference between man the 
unit, and the race which is an aggre- 
gation of these units ? What philoso- 
phical difference is possible ? In an- 
swer, I would say that while the in- 
dividual and the race alike possess 
body and soul, the individual at times 
manifests a power of becoming greater 
in every respect than the influence of 
heredity or surroundings can at all 
account for. Such individuals tell us 
of some powerful influence descending 
upon them, as it were, from a higher 
sphere, and to this they attribute the 
changes in their life and powers which 
make all their friends to marvel. No 
such stimulating and transforming in- 



BEYOND. 151 

fluence has ever manifested itself on so 
broad a scale as to affect our entire race 
at once, and we must conclude that the 
time has not come for such an event. 
As a race, our eyes are not lifted above 
the earth. We care little about our 
origin, and still less about our destiny. 
The love of war and bloodshed, delight 
in the flowing bowl and all its attend- 
ant revelry, are still characteristic of 
our race, and the heavy clouds that are 
gathering in our sky are not yet black 
enough with impending evil to arrest 
us in our downward course. 

Ah ! well for us it is that we are not 
to be left alone to rush headlong to 
destruction in our blind folly. Terrible 
as are the forces we have invoked 
against ourselves, those which shall 
save us from death by all manner of 
intoxication are infinitely greater. 

The wasting fever of war undoubt- 
edly must come, such war as the world 



152 BEYOND. 

has never seen before, but when the 
coveted excitement, changed to agony 
untold, is at last over, when our phys- 
ical forces are entirely exhausted, the 
loving Parent whose outstretched hand 
we have always refused, will show a 
pitying face. A draught of infinite 
peace will be imparted to our spirit, and 
we shall rise in newness of life to enjoy 
the forgotten delights of obedient child- 
hood, and make this old world over into 
one entirely new. 



BEYOND. 153 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

I had not thought to touch this 
strain when I began to write of the 
Beyond, but some things almost write 
themselves, and I have not forgotten 
the closing words of the appeal with 
which this book opens. " We are 
trodden down by our brothers among 
the living. Help us, our fathers from 
the dead." 

Ah ! if the wire which carries this 
petition outward can bear the strength 
of the return current, it may possibly 
convey such tidings as words are not 
able to express, for is it not true that 
the sweetest strains are cradled within 
a silence which speaks more profoundly 
to the soul than does the music to the 
ear ? Let us hearken. 



154 BEYOND. 

" Do you wish to know what stands 
in the way of our coming to the 
rescue? Nothing but your unbelief 
in the possibility of our coming. 
Thank God that unbelief is grow- 
ing weak. Could you know what 
exhausting labor is ours in our efforts 
to reach 3^011, you would pray rather 
for light to enable you to do }^our part. 
Believe, oh, believe that we have not 
forgotten. In agony of spirit we are 
striving to awaken you from slumber, 
to instil into your minds the supreme 
truth, that no good thing that can be 
named is impossible of occurrence. 
You are ready to believe it for the 
material, why not accept it in the 
spiritual ? 

" Religious liberty is your priceless 
privilege. Can you possibly gain it by 
setting foot on religion itself ? Be 
sane. Learn to discriminate. Throw 
away the chaff, but keep the wheat. 



BEYOND. 155 

Death is a magician, not a murderer. 
The pain all comes beforehand. The 
passage itself is not painful. Death 
merely turns the key in a door you 
never saw before, and you step out into 
such a freedom as you never dreamed 
of. ' Be thou faithful unto death, and 
I will give thee a crown of life,' 
suggests a great truth. Try to get 
hold of it. No man, and no body of 
men, no spirit, nor >any combination of 
them, can prevent you from making 
your life a success. There are prizes 
to be won. Why not try for them? 

" But you say you are trying. Sword 
in hand, you are battling for the right. 
Yes, we know, and sometimes you are 
wounded, and help seems never to 
come. Hold fast. We are building a 
road. 

" It is already finished, and the cars 
are on the track. You shall not die 
of wounds like these. Help is near. 



156 BEYOND. 

Your prayer is heard. We knew it 
would be. From the heights beyond 
the heights has come the order, 4 De- 
scend in power. Earth's children are 
ready to receive you.' And we are not 
few nor weak. Our phalanx moves in 
a light which nothing can withstand. 
Believe it, and stand upon your feet. 
We are already here." 



BEYOND. 157 



CHAPTER XXV. 

There is another grand division of 
my subject, but the difficulty of present- 
ing it through the medium of written 
language is even greater than that al- 
ready dealt with, and only a slight at- 
tempt will now be made. Not only do 
thoughts take the place of things in the 
Beyond, but emotions take the place of 
forces. By emotions in this connection 
I mean those currents of energy which 
have their rise in, and are more or less 
under the control of individualized in- 
telligence, as love and hate, joy and 
sorrow, hope and fear, happiness and 
distress; and by forces I mean those 
which are sometimes called blind forces, 
such as attraction in its various forms, 



158 BEYOND. 

heat, electric vibration, and the like. 
As these last pertain especially to 
matter, we should expect them to retire 
into the background in a world where 
mind-realities, or facts of consciousness, 
absolutely dominate. And so they do. 
And here may be a good place to in- 
dicate what part matter really plays 
in this immaterial world. Let me call 
attention to the world of art. Let us 
recall its great names, and the master- 
pieces which have given them fame, the 
wonderful poems, the paintings, the 
sculpture, and the musical creations 
that will never die, and then pause and 
consider how slight are the demands 
made by this woncler-world on the lower 
world of matter. The poet and the 
musician call for writing materials, the 
sculptor needs some clay and a few 
modeling tools, the painter some pig- 
ments and brushes, and a bit of canvas. 
With these slight aids the noble con- 



BEYOND. 159 

ceptions of genius are materialized for 
the delight of future generations. 

Take another illustration. When a 
ship goes out of the harbor, it is to be 
assumed that she takes her anchor with 
her, and carefully guards it against 
possible loss. 

It is likewise true that within the 
scope of the great and splendid activ- 
ities of a free spirit, a material anchor 
is somewhere safely cared for, yet such 
an anchor has no more prominent re- 
lation to the activities of the spirit than 
the anchor of a ship has to the ship's 
power to cross the sea. If we could think 
of a ship with nothing else to do but to 
lie around the harbor, the relative im- 
portance of the anchor would increase 
very much ; and if it had no anchor of 
its own, it might attempt to tie up to 
some other vessel that had one. And 
so with earth-bound spirits whose testi- 
mony is sometimes quoted to the effect 



160 BEYOND. 

that spirit-life is as dependent on matter 
as any other. Most of them are bliss- 
fully ignorant of their own poverty, and 
move about the earth, that is to say in 
the lower or earthly strata of thoughts 
and feelings, because they have no de- 
sires above them. 

They remember this life as a lost 
heaven, and are continually bemoaning 
that loss in secret, while their activities 
take the form of influencing mortals to 
this or that kind of sensual indulgence, 
which they wish to share through sym- 
pathy. Every impulse and desire is 
bent upon a possible recovery of the 
earth-life, and they are so ignorant of, 
and indifferent to, any higher form of 
life, that it remains without existence to 
them. 

I would not say they are insensible to 
the enlargement of their powers con- 
sequent upon their release from the con- 
finement of an earthly body. They 



BEYOND. 161 

could not be. Their discovery that 
death does not destroy the inner con- 
sciousness was a great surprise to them, 
but the novelty of the discovery soon 
wore away. What seemed so strange 
at first, became a truism, a simple 
scientific fact, previously unknown, and 
unable in itself to supply any stimulus 
to their higher powers. 

It is evident that the testimony of 
these upon the subject is worthless, 
while those who have battled for and 
won the prize of recognition in a higher 
sphere give abundant evidence of their 
freedom from the bondage of matter, 
and the desires that have material 
things for their object. 

Resuming my subject, not only 
matter, but those forces which are in- 
separably associated with it, retire into 
the background, nay, almost disappear, 
in the Beyond. Emotions take their 

place. 
ii 



162 BEYOND. 

The atmosphere, or that which cor- 
responds to what we know by the term, 
seems charged with some powerful ele- 
ment, resembling electricity in its 
effects, but differing from it in that it 
seems to be sensitive to thought, and to 
be capable of responding to it with dy- 
namic force. A shock from this ele- 
ment is in every respect as real to the 
consciousness as an electric shock is to 
us. It comes from without and ex- 
pends its force upon the gaseous body. 
Being sensitive to thought, it does not 
impress one as being capricious in its 
nature, but as though acting according 
to some law which it is of the highest 
importance to discover, if possible. 

With the perceptive and intuitional 
faculties wrought up to the highest state 
of activity, it is presently discovered 
that it is not thought in the abstract, 
but thought surcharged with feeling or 
with devotion to a principle, some cher- 



BEYOND. 163 

ished sentiment of the soul, which has 
the power to excite this hitherto un- 
known element ; and gradually it dawns 
on the mind that this element corre- 
sponds to public opinion on earth, that it 
emanates from the inhabitants of that 
part of the spirit-realm, and that if your 
mind does not happen to be in accord 
with theirs, you must either get aAvay 
or do battle for your life. By life, I 
mean your power and freedom of ex- 
pression, the very breath of the spirit, 
what a printing-press is to a newspaper, 
cut off from which, the paper is dead. 

Manifestations of emotion, both in 
kind and degree, depend upon two 
things, our spiritual state or condition, 
and the nature of our surroundings. 
Passing over the first of these, it is 
evident that earth-surroundings greatly 
limit the expression of emotion; and 
when we observe the effect of a power- 
ful current of this kind upon the physical 



164 BEYOND. 

tissues of the body, weakening and con- 
suming them as by a flame, we see that 
the length of our stay here is involved 
in our ability to control our emotions. 

Not so in the Beyond, where our stay 
is without assignable limits, and where 
the pent-up emotions of a lifetime at 
last find vent, and pour themselves out 
as by flood-gates to the sea. 

And it is here that music plays its 
part in that wonder-world. For as ideas 
have each their appropriate form, so every 
emotion has a musical strain peculiar 
to it. 

And who can describe the healing 
power of music under a master's hand ? 
Reading the mind and soul as an open 
book, and informing every tone with the 
vibrations of a perfect sympathy born 
of knowledge, he administers to the soul 
whose life has been a tragedy long- 
drawn-out, such throbbing waves of 
strength and consolation, himself re- 



BEYOND. 165 

maining hidden, as seem to issue from 
the very stars, and drown the memory 
of that age-long pain in an ocean of 
oblivion. 

Ah ! believe me, it is another world, 
where the powers of this one do not 
rule. 



166 BEYOND. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

And yet, as I have indicated, it is 
possible to live so far below one's moral 
and spiritual possibilities, that the loss 
of life will seem the loss of heaven, and 
the men of power on earth whom one 
has envied will come to seem very gods, 
worthy of being worshipped. Such a 
delusion as this is in part due to the 
absence of a common time-element. 

Duration is measured only by the suc- 
cession of various states of conscious- 
ness, and these change so rapidly under 
the influence of the vibratory intensity 
of the new life, that the events of a day 
lengthen it out until it seems like a year 
upon earth ; and day and night being 
one in the Beyond, so far as activity is 
concerned, although they differ some- 



BEYOND. 167 

what in magnetic conditions, when one 
of the.se year-long days is past, the spirit, 
glancing across into earth-life, at some 
money king, with thirty years of active 
life before him, can scarcely avoid en- 
dowing him with a kind of immortality, 
and may devote the fiery energies of the 
soul to building up the fortunes of such 
a one, with no higher object than that 
of keeping the mental balance and 
avoiding reflection. 

This necessity for keeping the balance 
supplies motive for a great deal that is 
done by spirits in the lower strata of 
life in the Beyond. It is not, strictly 
speaking, mental balance, but organic, 
affecting the whole being. A spirit pos- 
sessed of any conscious individuality 
whatever must generate a certain inte- 
rior force to maintain it. This keeps 
his body in a state of equilibrium be- 
tween the inner and outer pressure, and 
the body of a spirit is naturally as 



168 BEYOND. 

valuable to him as ours is to us. It 
protects him against currents of thought 
and emotion that are not adapted to his 
needs, and when evenly balanced he is 
able to put forth effective will-power 
along the plane of his development and 
below. 

Any one who has not learned what 
soul-action is will have it to learn soon 
after the exchange of worlds. No 
other form of activity is possible there. 
No spirit strikes another with his hand, 
nor presents him with a visible token of 
wealth, yet battles are fought and pres- 
ents given. As a suggestion : when 
you say to your friend, " Good-bye and 
good-luck to } r ou," you are making him 
a spiritual present, although you may 
not be aware of it. 

Whenever you launch a curse, if only 
in thought, you strike a blow, against 
which conscious rectitude is an actual 
armor, and the only one. 



BEYOND. 169 

The very slightest impulse of ill-will 
directed toward any one is an action of 
the soul that may do real harm, and cer- 
tainly makes a record. 

These statements will commend them- 
selves as true to most of my readers, 
many of whom, however, would not be 
able to explain why they are so sure of 
what they have learned from no teacher, 
and cannot recall from the pages of ex- 
perience. Let me suggest. 

From six to nine hours' sleep is an 
essential part of our daily lives. We 
suppose ourselves to actually sleep, not 
only in body but in mind and soul as 
well. Perhaps some who have very 
little mind and even less spirit, do sleep 
when their body sleeps, but there are 
very large numbers of people who, the 
moment the brain becomes quiescent, 
enter at once on the most active part of 
their daily existence. 

This is especially true of such as dur- 



170 BEYOND. 

ing their waking hours have attained 
some knowledge of spiritual values, and 
have taken their stand on this or that 
platform of principles, religious, moral, or 
even political, and who would be ready 
to contend in argument, or even, if nec- 
essary, take up arms, in defense of their 
positions ; in other words, who have 
a conscious location in some field of 
thought or fortress of belief. 

The extent to which we influence 
others, or are influenced by them, dur- 
ing our sleeping hours, very few realize, 
because unable to recall, when waking, 
the experiences of the night just passed ; 
but be sure that no reform can ever make 
much progress until the agitation for it 
becomes sufficiently powerful to link the 
day to the night, and engage the activi- 
ties of partially freed spirits while their 
bodily consciousness is lost in slumber. 

It is here that lessons are learned and 
impressions made, the recalling of the 



BEYOND. 171 

results of which may surprise us as to 
the extent, and puzzle us as to the origin, 
of our knowledge. 

Readers of Emerson will find this a 
key to some of his mysterious yet de- 
lightful sayings. 



172 BEYOND. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

Those who have never entered into 
any kind of associate life where they 
might learn to think and act for others 
as well as for themselves, will have a 
particularly hard time on the other side. 

For no one can go through life with- 
out becoming responsible for innumer- 
able acts, even if he does nothing more 
than make room for himself, and defend 
his own footing ; and if he persists in 
living for himself, it follows that his 
motives will never rise above the care 
of himself, and, possibly, of those who 
contribute to his comfort. 

If such a man, by speculation or other- 
wise, becomes able to surround himself 
with the tokens of wealth, there will not 
be wanting those who will bow low to 



BEYOND. 173 

him ; and when he is called out of life, 
with perhaps no particularly heavy 
weight on his conscience, he will strut 
into another world carrying with him a 
very large sense of his own importance. 

Now, there is no need to enlarge upon 
the emotions he will arouse, the intense 
though secret hilarity with which he 
will be taken in hand, and the endless 
variety of hazing operations to which 
he will be subjected ; but he will be sure 
to make the unexpected discovery that 
death is a lost friend, long before the 
last spark of self-conceit is extinguished 
within him. 

It is scarcely possible to convey an 
idea of how small a part individual 
egotism is allowed to play in the world 
beyond. 

In this world our race, as a race, is 
under protection. We are all more or 
less conscious of this in our own person. 

Even the most stolid, when suddenly 



174 BEYOND. 

reduced to the extremity of distress, 
find themselves calling upon God, al- 
most without conscious volition. 

If it were not so, if this protection 
were withdrawn, our race would shortly 
cease to be. 

In the spirit-world, or in that part of 
it which adjoins this, figuratively speak- 
ing, which we enter as individuals, this 
sense of a general protection disappears. 
We find we are to stand or fall on our 
own individual record. We cannot lose 
ourselves in the mass. There is no 
mass. Time and space no longer exist 
for us. They are gone with the bodily 
senses and mathematical reasoning to 
which they were a prime necessity. 

Sight, hearing, and touch of the soul 
have awakened, however, and how to 
use these new senses whose field of 
action is so immensely greater than the 
senses we have parted with, engages our 
attention. 



BEYOND. 175 

Their first reports are so different 
from anything we have known that we 
discredit them entirely, are sure we 
must be dreaming, and put forth strong 
efforts to wake up. Failing in this, we 
look about us and endeavor to get our 
bearings. 

Although time and space have left 
us, eternity and infinity have taken their 
place, and a feeling of awe steals over 
us at the realization, a feeling that ex- 
tends in part to ourselves as we discover 
a certain element within us which now 
for the first time recognizes its home. 

Then, in a flash, we perceive as never 
before, the essential narrowness of the 
limits of earth-life, and our mental 
vision shows us that whatever may have 
raised that phase of existence above the 
merely sensual or animal, had its home 
in the Beyond, and was only a visitor 
on earth. 

We find ourselves ushered into the 



176 BEYOND. 

domain of causes, and a thousand per- 
plexities of memory disappear in a mag- 
ical way, as we become sensible of the 
tremendous force of the activities at 
work in this heretofore hidden realm, 

A spirit sometimes finds himself as if 
on a stage, and the pressure of a power- 
ful will bids him to act out his own 
character. He consents, for why should 
he not? Scene follows scene; men 
and women from every walk of life, 
those whom he has known, and those of 
whom he has read, appear and act their 
part ; kings and courtiers come and go, 
prophets and peasants, soldiers and 
merchants ; and he finds some link con- 
necting him with them all. Perhaps a 
plot is formed to destroy his reputa- 
tation; thread by thread the web is 
wound about him. How shall he get 
free ? Is it not all a dream ? But he is 
made to feel that he must not insist upon 
knowing. Something like an electric 



BEYOND. 177 

shock answers his thought, and bids 
him to consider his surroundings real, 
whether they are or not, and forbids 
him to think of such a thing as apply- 
ing a test. And, indeed, there is small 
leisure for anything of that kind. He 
finds himself obliged to put forth ener- 
gies he never dreamed of possessing, to 
keep from going distracted. The stage 
w r idens until it becomes the floor of a 
world. The audience swells to millions. 
He reaches out for their sympathy, but 
they do not respond. They do not pre- 
tend to know whether he is a true man 
or a scoundrel. If he cries, " I am 
true," they answer, " Prove it." What 
can I do to prove it ? But they turn 
away unconcerned, w T hile another strand 
of falsehood is thrown around him and 
he is brought to his knees, where he is 
made the target for scorn and contempt, 
which come like arrows to pierce his 
form. In the depth of his despair, he 

12 



178 BEYOND. 

sends out a piercing cry to the spheres 
above him for help. 

Just then he discovers that he is 
clothed in armor, with a good sword 
at his side. He did not know it before, 
he could not possibly say how or 
whence it came, but it is not a time 
for curious questions. He seizes the 
blade and with one sweep severs the 
cords that bound him, stands upon his 
feet, and then, in a voice that startles 
himself, he calls upon his enemies to 
show themselves. Instead of that he 
hears their retreating feet, the clouds 
lift, the applause of the audience gives 
him back his lost strength, and he is 
ready for the next ordeal. 

Now it may not be supposed that 
during such a scene as this, it would be 
possible for the spirit to receive and an- 
swer thought-messages from his friends 
on earth, but it is even so. A spirit 
with a heart will at least make the effort 



BEYOND. 179 

to respond to every demand made upon 
it, but if among the circle of his friends 
one sends out the message, " Come now, 
if you care anything about me, I wish 
you would help me find this gold-mine. 
What do you have to do anyhow?" 
the spirit may be excused if he fails to 
respond, and does not immediately pro- 
ceed to explain just what he has to do. 

THE END. 



Vfeior? of Tbyrza: 

THE GIFT OF THE HILLS. 



IB-ST IEIS. 



The author is convinced that war, strife, poverty, 
misery, disease, and death are the result of man's reck- 
less self-indulgence ; and that so long as he shall be 
actuated by greed and selfishness in his tillage of the 
soil, in the various industrial pursuits, and in the marts 
of trade, he will " sow the wind and reap the whirl- 
wind." 

But the lamentable state of things will not continue 
forever. The author, with "prophetic mind," per- 
ceives that the time will come when man will live in 
harmony with Nature, and yield himself to the guid- 
ance of " Divine Love." So guided and inspired, he 
will refine, purify, and ennoble the life of his fellow- 
men. Then agriculture will be " restored to right 
uses " and held in its pristine honor ; and the earth 
will yield its fruits abundantly. A noble simplicity 
and wholesomeness will characterize the life of man, 
and universal peace will gladden his heart. The whole 
world will rejoice in the return of the Golden Age. 

Cloth, 75 Cents. 

The Arena Publishing Oomnany, 

COPLEY SQUARE, BOSTON/MASS. 



His Perpetual Adoration; 

— OR,— 

THE CHAPLAIN'S OLD DIARY. 



BY KEY. JOSEPH F. PLINT. 



This is an extremely interesting and realistic war 
story, told in the form of a diary left at his death by a 
veteran who had been a captain in the Northern army, 
and with Grant at Vicksburg and Sherman on his 
march to the sea. Two or three of the great events 
of the war are told in stirring fashion, but the narra- 
tive deals mainly with the inside life of the soldier in 
war time, and its physical and moral difficulties. A 
fine love story runs throughout, the hero having 
plighted his troth before setting out for the front. 
Being wounded in Georgia, he is cared for in the home 
of a Southerner, who is at the front with Lee's army, 
but who has in some way earned the bitter hatred of 
the wife whom he has left at home. She falls des- 
perately in love with her wounded guest, and to him 
there comes the sorest temptation of his life. How 
he comes out of the ordeal must be left to the reader 
of the story to discover. 

Cloth, $1.25; Paper, 50 Cents. 

The Arena Publishing Co., 

COPLEY SQUARE, BOSTON, MASS. 



THE LAND OF NADA. 



BY BONNIE SCOTLAND. 



The Land of Nada, the scene of this charming fairy 
story, is an enchanted country, ruled over by King 
Whitcombo and the beautiful Queen Haywarda. 
Prince Trueheart and his blue-eyed baby sister, Prin- 
cess Dorothy, and their wonderful adventures ; the 
enchanted cows and chickens, the wonderful lemon 
tree whose trunk yields three different kinds of 
beverages, are some of the wonders of this delightful 
land; as are, also, the doings of fairies, genii, goblins, 
and enchanted hawks. How the blind prince recovers 
his sight, how the baby princess is spirited away, cared 
for, and finally restored to her home, and how the 
wicked goblin and the two hawks that spirited her 
away are punished, may be read in this delightful 
fairy story, which teems with graceful conceits and 
charming fancies, and which can be read, not only by 
children of tender years, but by those of larger growth. 

The style in which the book is gotten up makes it 
very suitable for a Christmas present. 

Cloth, ?5 Cents; Paper, 25 Cents. 

The Arena Publishing Company, 

Copley Square, Boston, Mass. 



NICODEHUS: A POEM. 

3B3r G-race Sla-a/w ZDvuff. 

In this fine blank -verse poem, written by the well-known New 
York authoress, Mrs. Grace Shaw Duff, is given, in autobiographic 
form as from the lips of Nicodemus himself, a poetic account of 
the two episodes^between that ruler of the Jews and Jesus, as re- 
lated in the third and seventh chapters of John's gospel. The 
poem is full of local color, and opens with a striking description 
of sunrise on the morning of the last day of the feast of the Pass- 
over in Jerusalem. Then follows a picture of the unusual stir in 
the city due to the crowds attending the feast, after which there is 
a fine word painting of the scene in the temple, with its motley 
throngs of maimed and halt, of venders of unsavory wares, of 
idlers, and of graver men. 

The description of the midnight visit of Nicodemus to Jesus may 
be quoted in full as a typical specimen of the tone, manner, and 
fine musical versification of the whole poem : — 

" On* night from sleepless bed I rose, and went 
To where He lodged, and bade the porter say 
One Nicodemus — ruler — came, and speech 
Would have with Him. There was no moon, but hosts 
Of stars, and soft, pale glow from shaded lamps 
Made silver light. The air was still, with just 
Enough of light to waft at times a faint 
Sweet oleander scent, and gently float 
Some loosened petals down. I heard no sound 
But sudden knew another presence near, 
And turned to where He stood ; one hand held back 
The curtain's fold ; the other clasped a roll. 
No King could gently bear a prouder mien ; 
And when I gracious rose to offer meet 
Respect to one whose words had won for Him 
Regard, I strangely felt like loyal slave, 
And almost ' Master ! ' trembled on my lips. 
A deep, brave look shone in his eyes, as if 
He saw the whole of mankind's needs, yet dared 
To bid him hope ; and when he spoke, his words 
And voice seemed fitted parts of some great psalm." 
The book is beautifully printed on first-class paper, and is finely 
illustrated with numerous half-tones, after sepia-wash drawings by 
that excellent artist Fredrick C. Gordon ; and each section of the 
poem has a charmingly artistic vignette for the initial capital 
letter. The binding is in keeping with the general get-up, and the 
book would make an admirable Christmas present. 
CLOTH, 75 CENTS. 

The Arena Publishing Co., Copley Sq., Boston, Mass. 



The Woman-Suffrage Movement 

IN THE UNITED STATES. 

IB3T .A. L^^7"2-EE. 

The author of this book believes that the Bible is the inspired 
word of God, and that those who accept its teachings as authorita- 
tive must be opposed to the woman-suffrage movement. Though 
he bases his arguments mainly on the teachings of Holy Scripture, 
he does not overlook the lessons of history. But history only 
confirms him in his contention that marriage is something more 
than a civil contract terminable at the pleasure of the partners. 
From the true point of view marriage is an ordinance of God. 
Should it ever become the general belief that it is other than a 
sacrament, there would be " no protection, no honorable or ele- 
vated position, no high social plane or place for woman." And 
if marriage is a sacrament, there is but one valid cause for 
divorce — the one laid down in the Word of God. The husband is 
the head of the household, and his commands should be respected 
and obeyed, for obedience and protection are correlative terms ; 
the interests of husband and wife should be identical. 

The various "cries" of the advocates of woman suffrage, as 
"taxation without representation," "liberty, fraternity, and 
equality," are considered and declared to be without force, and 
this declaration is supported by cogent reasons. The author is 
confident that if woman suffrage were enacted into law it would 
not only harden women but work irreparable injury to man, for 
those now opposed to the movement would then "reconcile the 
principle and its effects upon their environment with the Bible by 
throwing the Bible away." Thus, the " attack strikes at the root 
of all moral and religious training." 

The book merits a wide circulation. Candid advocates of the 
movement will desire to know what can be said against it ; and 
its opponents will be glad to have at hand reasons so forcible and 
illustrations so apt in condemnation of woman suffrage. 

We cheerfully say so much for the book, though, as is well 
known, we are strongly in favor of the movement towards a larger 
liberty of action for woman; and we are looking earnestly and ex- 
pectantly for the coming of the day when woman emancipated and 
enfranchised shall work out her destiny in perfect freedom. 

154 pp. Cloth, 75 cents; Paper, 25 cents. 

The Arena Publishing Company, 

Copley Square, Boston, Mass. 



The Heart of Old Hickory. 



By WILL ALLEN DROMGOOLE. 



Eight charming and popular stories by this gifted 
young Tennessee writer are collected in this beautiful 
volume. Each of these stories is a study that reveals 
a different phase of human character, and each study 
is a work of art. Several show the author's subtle 
skill in dialect-writing, and all reveal the hand of a 
master in delineating character. Here we have inim- 
itable humor, gleeful fun, delightful sallies of wit, and 
genuine pathos, all combined with extraordinary 
descriptive powers. Raciness, strength, vividness, and 
felicity of expression characterize the author's style. 
He is to be pitied who can read these stories without 
being widened in his sympathies, elevated in thought, 
quickened in conscience, and ennobled in soul. The 
stories are the work of a literary genius, and go far to 
justify an admirer of her writings, who has himself no 
mean fame as editor, author, and critic, in calling Will 
Allen Dromgoole the " Charles Dickens of the New 
South." 

Cloth, $1.25 ; Paper, 50 Cents. 

The Arena Publishing Company, 

Copley Square, Boston, Mass. 



WHICH WAY, SIRS, THE BETTER? 

A Story of Our Toilers. 

B3r TAMES *&. l^^L.S.TX^T. 



This is the story of a labor strike, its causes and consequences. 
The chief character, Robert Belden, is a self-made man, who, 
from being office-boy in the Duncan Iron Works at Beldendale, 
Pa., had risen, by dint of intelligence, hard work, and attention to 
business, to be partner and business manager of the concern. 

A temporary depression in the iron trade makes it necessary for 
him to give notice of a reduction of ten per cent in the wages of 
his employees. The latter are dissatisfied, and, aftercallinga meet- 
ing of their union, demand from him an inspection of the books of 
cencern by a committee on their behalf, so that they may have the 
assurance that the reduction is necessary. As the disclosure 
would injure the business, the manager refuses to comply t\ith 
this demand, and the workmen go out on strike. Thereupon the 
manager, in order to fill his contracts, employs laborers from a dis- 
tance, and hires a band of fifty guards from a detective agency to 
protect them and bis works. A dreadful riot ensues, with blood- 
shed and loss of life, and the works are closed. 

After a time the manager proposes a new arrangement with his 
former workmen, whereby, under the system of profit-sharing, 
they shall receive a share of the profits in addition to their wages. 
The plan works admirably. In a comparatively brief period the 
workmen become well-to-do and contented, many owning their own 
homes, and Beldendale becomes the model of a prosperous and 
happy manufacturing town. 

The story has evidently been suggested by the terrible strikes 
and riots in the coke fields of Pennsylvania, and the later ones at 
Homestead and Buffalo, and the author's object is to show the 
uselessness and the evil results of strikes, and to propose "a 
better way" for the solution of the perennial conflict between 
capital and labor. His admirable story does this most effectively. 
It is written in that unassuming, straightforward style which is so 
impressive when dealing with "the short and simple annals of the 
poor," and it should be read and pondered over and taken to 
hc^rt by every capitalist and employer of labor in the country, on 
th* one hand, and by every workingman, on the other. 

Cloth, 75 Cents; Paper, 25 Cents. 

The Arena Publishing Company, 

COPLEY SQUARE, BOSTON, MASS. 






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